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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, \ 



Chap. n-Jj.-S.Sf/ 
Shelf .jM S..6... 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. % 



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UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION 



OF 



EARNINGS. 



The Evil Effects and the Remedy. 



y/BY 

W. V. MARSHALL. 




OSWEGO, KANSAS. 
1886. 



COPYKIGHT, 1886, By W. Y. MAKSHALL. 



PBESS OF GEO. C. HACKSTAFT 
ST. LOUIS, MO. 



PREFACE. 



All pretense to merit from a literary stand- 
point is waived in the presentation of this work 
before the public. I have gained my object if 
I have succeeded in making understood the fol- 
lowing, believed by me to be, genuine facts, viz: 

That Unfair Distrihidion of Earnings is the 
true and only cause of over-production, indus- 
trial depression and *' hard times." 

That the primary agencies of unfair distribu- 
tion are two : 

1. Unfair taxation, exercised through the in- 
strumentality of a false tax code. 

2. Unfair exchange, exercised through the: 
instrumentality of monopoly. 

That a proper remedy consists of the intro- 
duction of a fair system of taxation and the 
abolition of monopolies. 

That fair taxation, while constituting of it- 
self a remedial measure, will effectuate the abol- 
ition of monopolies. 



11 PREFACE. 

That what must follow is Independent enter- 
prise, free competition and the rapid advance- 
ment of society to a state of unrestricted pro- 
gress and prosperity. 

That all must be interested in the change 
since no class is exempt from the deleterious 
influences of present morbid conditions. 

W. V. M. 



CONTENTS. 



Preface, , • • • . i 

Introductory, ; , . . 5 

Over-production, industrial depression and "hard times." 
CHAPTER 1. 
Man's mission on earth — Agencies or means — Lacks and tendencies. 39 
CHAPTER H. 

Methods of wealth getting — Earnings— No contradiction — Why does 
man mistake and encroach ? — Erroneousness of man — Preponderant 
strength of self-interest — Nature of remedies considered — Not de- 
signed to encroach — Fines and penalties — The proper way. 57 

CHAPTER HI. 

Division of labor — Powerlessness to discover values of earnings — 
Money — Worths or values — Capital — Amplification of wants — 
Balance between capital and need of it — Fallacious cause for hard s 
times. - - _ - - - 88 

CHAPTER IV. 

Competition— Reward with earnings — Supply and demand — Over- 
production — Restricted competition. - - iii 

CHAPTER V. 

Monopoly — Irresistible divestment of properties and priveleges — 
Obhgatoriness of monopoly— Advantage sought. - 135 



U CONTENTS. 

C HAPTER VI. 

Wars and rumors of wars— Standpoint of hard times reform — Ex- 
actor's standpoint — Standpoint of revolt — Finance of war — Regu- 
lating the currency. - - • - i66 

CHAPTER VII. 

Waste of human capabilities, - • • 185 

CHAP TER VIII. 
Combinations of capital, justifiable and unjustifiable. • 196 

CHAPTER IX. 

Common place fallacies — Born money makers — Let us see aright — 
Whom does it hurt? — Legitimate fortunes — Labor combinations 
— Strikes and revengeful violence — What they say. - 207 

CHAPTER X: 

The remedy— Tables— Who would pay the taxes ? — The method of 
levy — Rate of tax increase — Personal satisfactions — Incomes — 
Money — Right of tax regulation— Tariff— Labor and capital- 
Tax on hquors — Who must lead. - - 231 

Addenda, ...••• 262 

Subsidies. 



Confirmatory Arguments, , • • 268 

r 

Selections, . . . • • 281 



INTRODUCTION. 



The substantial ills with which society is 
afflicted are these : Unfair distribution and the 
evils and evil agencies growing out of unfair dis- 
tribution as a primary cause. 

By unfair distribution, I mean such a division 
of earnings as allows to some more than is theirs 
by right of their own energy and expenditure of 
means, the process involving a denial to others 
of an equivalent amount which they have been 
instrumental in bringing forth. Here is one 
way in which an unfair distribution of earnings 
maybe executed: A manufacturing company 
may pay less than real worth for the hired labor 
and raw material used in the manufacture of its 
specific articles of sale, and charge and get more 
than real worth for the manufactured articles 
when sold, producing the consequences that the 
manufacturing company receives a greater share 
of wealth than by its industry and the use of 
its capital it has legitimately earned, while the 
laborers, the furnishers of the raw products, and 
the purchasers of the finished products have so 



6 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

much wealth deducted without an equivalent 
given from their earnings. A railroad com- 
pany may pay less for the labor of others, and 
for the machinery of transportation than they 
are worth and charge more for their own servi- 
ces of transportation than they are worth. This 
giving to one class or set of persons more than 
the}^ have earned, which can only be done by 
disallowing to others as much as they have 
earned is attended, I am forced to believe, 
with grave and untoward results, the facts of 
which I will show, or cherish the belief that I 
will, with the double view in hand, of convinc- 
ing people whereat lies the foundation of the ills 
which oppress them, and of giving light upon 
the proper course to pursue for relief. 

A prospective impression of the causes, meth- 
ods and consequences proposed to be examined 
as phenomena embraced in unfair distribution 
and its relations, will be of help to an understand- 
ing of the subject, and can be conveyed as well, 
as in any other way, by the employment of a 
few ideal illustrations: 

The Great Wall Street and Peoples Railroad, 
I will say, is projected to extend through a cer- 
tain section of the Union. The projectors resort 
to the usual custom of asking for aid. They 
get it. Possibly the National Government aids 
them with landed donations and in the procure- 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 7 

ment of funds. State aid of a similar kind is 
given them, and they get aid along the projected 
route in the settled districts from cities, towns, 
counties, townships and private citizens, in the 
way of bond issues, land and money donations, 
and other help. 

The amounts provided by all or any of these 
different forms of aid, positively in the gift of 
means to meet expenditures, negatively in the 
gift of reliefs from necessity to undergo expendi- 
ture, form a magnificent basis available for con- 
struction and equipment purposes and the credit 
necessary to complete. 

When after the receipt of such aid and the 
lapse of time the road is completed, by all the 
rules commonly governing in such cases the pro- 
jectors are the leading owners; and having from 
that fact the balance of control, they usually 
make use of the advantage to secure, at a trifling 
cost to themselves by means of dark integrity, 
whatever interests the people may have reserved 
in the property during the time of its develop- 
ment. 

What follows? Full proprietors, and wholly 
undeterred by any menaces that exist in law 
or elsewhere, they turn to and run the road 
as it if were an instrument provided sglely 
for their own rapid and grand self-enrichment. 
They proceed as if they never took thought 



8 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

that the road was ever designed by any one for 
any other purpose than their self-enrichment, and 
they conduct it as if that were the sole need of it. 
By their system of alliances with other roads, 
and over-charging, and use of the road in gene- 
ral to foster the private interests of themselves 
instead of the public interests of the founders, 
they add to their exchequer every year hundreds 
of thousands of dollars above what is a fair 
remuneration for their services and a fair profit 
upon the capital employed, assuming their right 
to profit upon capital which has been donated to 
them. 

Such practice illustrates how we are repaid 
for the favors we bestow. Having been induced 
to relinquish large blocks of our wealth into the 
hands of a few individuals we are rewarded by 
its beinof ever afterward used for the swindle 
and oppression of us. 

Another illustration: The manufacturers of 
three-profits — a name which I use for conven- 
iency, but which is applicable to many manufac- 
tured articles of special utility — are capitalists of 
great wealth and thrift. Years ago the leading 
men in that business met in secret council to 
take into consideration the advancement of their 
interests by the adoption of methods looking to 
improvement in the manufacture, sale, business 
conduct and legislative enactments relative to 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 9 

three-profits. At this meeting they agreed upon 
a general plan of concerted action and manage- 
ment which had for its object the control of the 
business of three-profits in such manner as to 
enable them to regulate the supply, destroy com- 
petition, set their own prices upon the labor and 
raw material which they engaged and to charge 
what they might see fit for the finished article. 
By union of action they succeeded in their pur- 
poses and they now are, as they long have been, 
masters of the situation. They are sole dealers, 
sole dictators of terms, and will not brook oppo- 
sition. The public is compelled to patronize 
them or go without. Three-profit mechanics 
must work for them upon such terms as are 
allowed or quit the trade, and producers of the 
raw materials must sell to the combination for 
such prices as they can get or not sell at all. To 
keep out native competition the combined three- 
profit manufactures glut the markets in the 
vicinity where a new factory has started up at 
such a ternporary low price as to ruin the new 
enterprise and force it out of existence. To keep 
out foreign competition they secure the enact- 
ment of tariff' laws forcing foreign manufactures 
to pay a large price for the privilege if they ship 
any three-profit goods into this country. As a 
result their wealth is increasing, as it long has 



10 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

increased, out of all proportion to the increase of 
a just and fair profit. 

This is a picture of the consolidating and mon- 
opolizing methods of the present day, permitted 
and fostered by a faulty system of taxation. 

Again. In the province of Wealthy-few the 
people are divided into two classes, the Opulent 
and the Common. A double method of taxation 
there prevails, the direct and the indirect. By 
the direct method the money which is demanded 
for public needs is paid directly from the hands 
of the contributors into the hands of the collec- 
tors. The direct tax levies are putatively ap- 
portioned according to worths of properties. 
In practice it is anything else than according to 
worths of properties, since by schemes of under- 
valuation, exemption and evasion, the rich 
Opulents manage to throw the burden of tax- 
ation upon the common class of people. The in- 
direct tax is paid by the people of this province 
when they buy most or all of manufactured 
goods, they paying each time they make 
a purchase a certain excess above what 
they would have to pay were there no indi- 
rect tax. The goods upon which this tax is 
collected are of both foreign and domestic man- 
ufactures. The tax upon the foreign goods is 
collected for the benefit of the government; that 
upon the domestic goods is collected for the ben- 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 1 

efit of the domestic manufacturers, the Opulents. 
Those who bring in the foreign goods advance 
the tax to the government when the goods are 
brought in. They are then so much out of 
pocket for the benefit of the people. They get 
reimbursement by charging enough when they 
sell their goods to make up for the government 
tax they have advanced. 

Domestic manufacturers, Opulents, get their 
tax by adding to the regular profit price of their 
goods enough to make their price equal the 
price importers sell at to make up for the gov- 
ernment tax which they pay. This double 
source of revenue — first, the regular profit upon 
their goods; secondly, the tax collected from the 
purchasers of their goods, has given, and goes 
on giving, astonishing riches to the manufactur- 
ing Opulents of Wealthy-few. Add, that by 
schemes of evasion these fellows escape the 
payment of a large share of what would be 
under the law their direct tax, and who, 
seeing as men see now, would not be an or- 
thodox Opulent of Wealthy-few.^ 

The common people in that land do not get 
to taste much of the enjoyments flowing from 
wealth, for the Opulents, having great influence 
at the law making centers, get import duties so 
gauged as to give them well nigh the exclusive 
home trade in their specific lines of business, 



12 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

whence they are enabled to so over-charge and 
under-pay as to gather up about all the wealth 
that is produced above what is needed for the 
plain subsistence of the common people. While 
the Opulents of Wealthy -few can keep their peo- 
ple in the present way of thinking, as regards 
both the direct and indirect methods of taxation 
there pursued, they will, as they look at it, be 
most admirably circumstanced. They will be 
supreme against the molestations of large man- 
ufacturers abroad and against the inroads of 
infant manufacturers at home. For while im- 
port duties protect them from being over- 
whelmed by more powerful competitors of for- 
eign nations, no similar law of taxation prevents 
them from overwhelming infant concerns which 
attempt to compete with them within the bounds 
of their own nation. 

This shows what is practically the form and 
workings of part of our system of taxation. 

These illustrations will serve to exemplify in 
the rough, the mistakenness of some of our poli- 
cies and practices and what is the character of 
some of the unjustifiable methods employed by 
designing men for self preferment, though not 
all. Other methods will be noticed as the de- 
velopment of the subject brings them into relief. 

I may here state that unfair distribution is not 
something peculiar to the age. In all prior 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 3 

times of which history treats, it has been the 
case that the citizens of one country as against 
those of another country, or a portion of the 
citizens as against the rest in their own country, 
have contrived to get at and enrich themselves 
from accumulations they have not themselves 
earned. We are advised that savages have 
invaded fellow tribes, clubbed and plundered 
them, then feasted upon the booty gained. That 
chiefs have arbitrarily appropriated the lands of 
their own subjects or those of conquered nations, 
then robbed the tillers of it through exhorbitant 
rent charges. That members of one race have 
captured those of another, reduced them to ser- 
vitude, then subsisted upon the surplus fruits of 
their labors. These are simply the records of 
methods popular in their time and place for the 
execution of unfair distribution. These methods 
we are now prone to look upon as methods of 
v'o'ence and robbery, the authors of them as 
tyrants and plunderers, the objects of them as 
victims who were forced to succumb and deliver. 
Such rude methods for the subjection and plun- 
der of a people, the more highly civilized inhab- 
itants of the globe will not now tolerate. Those 
who do now profit at the expense of their fellow- 
men have been constrained into the selection and 
use of methods more refined and less shocking. 
But though the execution of unfair distribution 



14 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

is conducted in a manner less shocking, it is 
none the less, on that account, the robbery of 
men by men. Nor does the refinement of the 
business make it the less objectionable since the 
effects are just as harsh and hard to bear. 

But because the business of plundering has not 
changed as man has marched forward and up- 
ward, except in the manner of pursuing it, we 
are not to infer that the business will never 
cease, and so have all hopes in us for the better- 
ment of the condition of man made naught. 
Considerations are sufficient, as shall be observed 
upon hereafter, to assure us that man will even- 
tually rise to the capacity to see all that relates 
to the evil of unfair distribution, among other 
things the way to an entire banishment of the 
evil. 

In miy opinion the basic or foundation methods 
by which unfair distribution is popularly execu- 
ted at the present day in our country are — 

First — Unfair Taxation. 

Second — Unfair Exchange. 

I call these the foundation methods, because it 

has been by getting on the advantageous side of 

them that intrio^uers have laid the foundation for- 

■/ 
the inflow of the wherewithal they subsequently ' 

employ to invest in our homestead possessions, or 

incumbrances against them, for the purpose of 

reaping additional profit from us in rent and in- 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 5 

terest. If we apply to and get rectitude in these 
fundamental methods of dispensing wealth, rec- 
titude in the others will follow as matters of in- 
evitable consequence or march of event. 

We have unfair taxation. Taxes are, or should 
be, solicited and contributed to meet those expen- 
ditures for the need and benefit of us which must 
from the nature and necessities of society as a 
body, be publicly incurred. For one party to 
evade payment of his proper share of such requis. 
ite expenditure is but to cause another or others 
to pay the unsatisfied portion for him. 

Such evasion and shouldering upon others 
what one himself should bear is a proceeding 
in nowise different in its nature and production 
of effects from the art of taking advantage, one 
of another, in a deal or trade. 

Unfair exchange is executed through the in- 
strumentality of monopolies, those having the 
monopoly of any business or occupation having 
it in their power to dictate terms of their own 
making to both buyers and sellers dealing with 
them. Unfair taxation, such as we have, is a 
promoter of monopoly. It does not conduce to 
the perpetuation of industries in disconnected, 
competitive and independently working wholes, 
but encourages the aggregation of them into 
consolidated concerns under single and non-com- 



1 6 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION 

petitive managements. In this form they are 
creative of unbounded mischief. 

Fair taxation would be of double good. First, 
those who paid taxes would have justice done 
them. Secondly, it would discourage combina- 
tions and give to independent and rising industries 
strength to defend and continue themselves, 
whence would follow good. When we had fair 
taxation we would have the provision which 
secures us industrial liberty; when we had in- 
dustrial liberty, man would, impelled by his 
nature, work out and maintain the solid welfare 
of himself. 

So much upon methods. Let us go ahead and 
outline some of the results of, and the manner 
of the connection of these results with, unfair 
distribution. 

OVER-PRODUCTION, INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION 
AND "hard TIMES.'^ 

Readers are familiar with the fact that we are 
treated every few years with an interval of stag- 
nation in business and industry which is charac- 
terized by intense want among a large portion 
of the population, while the country abounds in 
such a plenty that the possessors do not know 
what to do with their stores. Overstocked 
mills and factories everywhere are closed for 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 7 

want of orders, when thousands upon thousands 
of people all over the country are in distressive 
need of the ver}' things which are therein pro- 
duced. Nobody see^ns to want to buy although 
everybody is intensely anxious to sell. The 
hungry laborer cannot trade his labor for pro- 
duce, for his labor would worse the condition of 
things by the production of more. Overproduc- 
tion of the needs of life is just what the trouble is. 
Yet for the reason that we have over-produc- 
tion we have the living in a state of pinched neces- 
sity and distress, the larger portion of our 
population. This must appear to many strange. 
Something must appear to them to get out of 
joint. The question naturally occurs: how is it 
that the yield of the earth and of toil gets piled 
up unsold, unused and unsought for while so 
many are in such dire distress from need of it 
and owners are so wiUing to sell, but cannot? 
What is the nature of the monster that lodo^es 
itself in our midst by spells, and causes every- 
thing to come to a stand still, and this in the face 
of every willingness of the people to act and 
every readiness of the wheels and implements of 
industry to be set in motion. 

The answer is to be found in a study of the 
effects of unfair distribution or that misdivision 
of earnings which gives continuously to one class 
shares that another should have. The following 



1 8 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

illustration will demonstrate the development of 
these effects: 

The Island of Notseen, we will imagine, con- 
tains a population of one thousand able bodied 
men, who, with their families, form an isolated 
and self-sustaining community. All of these 
men sustain the relationship of employing pro- 
prietors and employed, in the ratio of 50 of the 
former to 950 of the latter. All the wants of 
the community are supplied by the management 
and industry of these one thousand men. But 
50 of these men employ the other 950, and pay 
them wages, so that the subsistence produced 
by the 1 000 men is first owned by the employing 
proprietors, who dispense it into the community 
in manner as merchants sells goods. 

We will imagine that the community produces 
commodities averaging in amount $2,000 worth 
per day ; that the workmen get $1.50 per day, a 
rate of wages enabling the lot of 950 to pur- 
chase an average of $1,425 worth of commodities 
daily. Then $575.00 worth becomes the daily 
average share of the employers. Let us sup- 
pose that this $575 worth just suffices to supply 
the employers with all their personal wants upon 
the island, and to provide them with the capital 
they must join with the efforts of themselves and 
workman to produce the $2,000 daily earnings. 
We have before us, then, a case of happy adjust- 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 9 

ment of reward with earnings all around, in 
which the process of production and consump- 
tion are equalized — in which the commodities 
produced in the community will go as fast as 
they are prepared, and the people will be kept 
continuously busy in forming a new supply. 

Assuming the adjustment here marked out to 
be the one suited to exactly maintain equilli- 
brium between supply and demand in this case, 
let us see what will take place under a change 
of adjustment. Suppose the employing proprie- 
tors of Notseen to go at and reduce the wages of 
their workman to $1.25 per day, without reduc- 
ing the scope of their operations, or the prices of 
their commodities : the workman then will be 
able to purchase daily, with their wages, only 
$1187.50 worth of goods or five-sixths as much 
as they, did before, causing there to be left of their 
earnings, one-sixth, or a sum equal to $237.50 
worth daily, in the hands of the proprietors as 
a gain or bonus to the latter. 

Now, let us keep in sight of this gain or bonus 
and learn what use is made of it or how it dis- 
poses of itself. 

The first fact we are made cognizant of is 
this: the gain shuns ready use or consumption. 
It is not turned to the speedy benefit of anybody 
like products that are not gains. At first blush 
this affirmation may not appear correct, but we 



20 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

shall soon prove the truth of it. We readily un- 
derstand that the workmen cannot make speedy 
use of this gain because they cannot purchase it 
with current washes. Their wao^e income is ex- 
hausted upon the expenditure, by each of them 
of $1.25 per day, or by all of them of $1187.50 
per day. They would have to expend $1425 
per day to secure the $237.50 worth gained 
away from them by the cut wages, but this they 
cannot do out of a wage income of $1.25 per 
day. So we see that inability to purchase pre- 
vents the workmen from making ready use of it. 
But why does this gain fail to admit of ready 
use by the proprietors. Because provision exis- 
ted prior to the cut in wages for full supply of 
all their regularly accruing wants, both personal 
and capital, in consequence of which no avenue 
of need afterward existed into which could be 
immediately projected this newly gotten gain. 
Increased extravagance of living on the part of 
the proprietors would serve for the making way 
with some of the gain, but the proprietors being 
in numbers few, and the gain in the aggregate 
large, the greatest extravagance they are in- 
clined to indulge in suffices for the consumption 
and extinguishment of but a small portion of it. 
They can use none of it profitably as capital, it 
must not be forgotten, since having abridged 
th e purchasing power of the great body of their 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 21 

customers by the cut in wages, they have need 
to decrease their capital employed in production 
rather than to increase it. 

The gain is not readily consumed, because 
the getters of it have no need of it, and the 
losers of it cannot purchase it. 

To the question of v^hat use is made of this 
gain, we must answer in view of the facts just 
given, that no material use is made of it at the 
start. 

To the question of how does it dispose of it- 
self, the answer is, that following the customary 
order of disposing itself this gain for awhile sim- 
ply accumulates — because it is unusable on the 
one hand and unpurchasable on the other hand 
by regular methods, it sets itself to piling up in 
the bins and shelves of store houses. 

So far we have traced this gain and are re- 
warded by finding that it sets itself to accumu- 
lating. Presently we will be made acquainted 
with a familiar completed development. The 
accumulation goes on until the proprietors of 
Notseen have their store houses stocked to suf- 
focacy with everything the people have been in 
the habit of producing and consuming. That 
condition of things is popularly know as "over- 
production," and the reader is advised that the 
over-production here traced up to, is over-pro- 
duction from the only cause which ever leads to 



22 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION 

general over-production of the needs of life, 
namely, unfair distribution, or the practice of 
profiting, class at the expense of class. 

Unfair distribution, the only cause of general 
over-production, leads inevitably to general over- 
production as one of its most eminent effects. 
Deny a class of a portion of it earnings, and all 
that portion except what may be used up by the 
getters of it in extra extravagances, piles up. 
Those from whom it is gotten are forced to re- 
duce themselves to greater meagerness of Hving. 
These are some of the first effects, though not all 
nor the most, as we are upon the verge of discov- 
ering. * 

The over-stock of commodities in Notseen, 
consequent upon the greedy action of the pro- 
prietors, having assumed proportions beyond 
which the proprietors care not to let them fur- 
ther expand, other events rapidly follow. The 
first in order of these is the adoption of meas- 
ures by the proprietors for the check and de- 
crease of over-production. The execution of 
these measures consist in the closing down of 
industries, the discharge of the workmen and 
the refusal to them of further chance to gain a 
living by work at their customary vocations. 

After this there appear and reign the events 
known as "industrial depression" and "hard 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 23 

times." These follow in rapid succession after 
the full development of over-production. 

"Over-production" needs no further descrip- 
tion for us to have an idea of what it is. "In- 
dustrial depression" we know to be the torpor 
of trade and industry occasioned by the stoppage 
of operations. Of what sort is the experience 
of "hard times." 

Keeping at' our illustrations, it is the experi- 
ence of discouraging trials and hard luck, joined 
with impoverishment and distress, attendant 
upon the men ift their endeavors, during the 
season of industrial depression, to maintain soul 
and body together. For though the men may 
be forced to desist from earning further subsis- 
tence, the physical systems of themselves and 
families do not cease to demand support. 

Common experience teaches us what is the 
succession of events that will occur through the 
period of hard times. After their discharge the 
men subsist so long as they can upon the means 
they have been enabled to lay by. Their means 
gone, they seek out their employers and beg to 
be allowed to resume work for the further sup- 
port of themselves and families. Comformably 
to rule, their petition fails of success. The em- 
ployes are not only denied labor, but are usually 
accused of shortsightedness and blamed for their 
condition in language not out of such fashion as 



24 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

this: "No, you should see that there is a plen- 
ty of the means of support. You must suffer 
the consequences of your folly. Had you been 
less extravagant and shiftless in the past you 
would not now be without means to purchase a 
living." To this the petitioners might very con- 
vincingly retort, " How is it possible to purchase 
the whole of a thing with less money than its 
real worth? Had we saved with unexampled 
care would that have left in our hands means to 
purchase the sixth you gained away from us 
when you reduced our wages twenty-five cents 
on the day." A reply characteristic of the kind 
usually given to terminate said conferences is: 
"It is not our business to engage in arguments 
with you; we understand how to conduct our 
affairs, and desire neither your importunity nor 
your advice." 

After this petition and colloquy, which is 
caused to take place out of sheer desperation in 
the men rather than from any hope they harbor 
of succeeding in a sort of attempt that they can 
not but know will fail, the next event transpires. 
This event is the reluctant impairment by the 
workmen of their homesteads. They are forced 
to part with their home properties — accumulated 
previous to the era of exaction — in such quan- 
tities and upon such terms as they can, or to 
encumber them, in order to get the wherewithal 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 25 

to live upon. To sell or to mortgage pre-earned 
possessions was in reality the only thing left the 
workman to do, the only recourse left open to 
them for the getting of a living in fact, after 
their employers had closed down and promul- 
gated the dicta that the stock in hand must be 
reduced before more should be produced; and if 
it were done after every imaginable struggle 
to avoid it, it had to be done before there could 
be a return to industrialism and "good times." 

Those who have no properties to 3neld up on 
these occasions, or have yielded up all and are 
still in want before the close of the period, must 
beg or steal, and in consequence get themselves 
lodged in pauper shops or prison pens. 

Such experiences as these contain the gist of 
what is meant, when we speak of "hard times.'' 
They are the peculiarly disagreeable experiences 
joined with the vanishment of accumulated gains. 

They are the more remote and harsh effects 
of unfair distribution. The denial to the em- 
ployes of Notseen of their full wages allowed 
them to Hve less bounteousl}' upon $1.25 per 
day. Now, for the dissipation of the resulting 
over-production, industries are closed down and 
they are denied the chance of getting any sort of 
a living, except as they surrender pre-earned 
possessions in exchange for it, beg or steal it, or 
have it furnished them as paupers or criminals. 



26 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

It is, indeed, experiencing hard times when will- 
ing hands are not peimitted to satisfy the crav- 
ing stomach by industry, when one is forced to 
part with the accumulations of his former toil 
out of dire necessity, and when a victim is sen- 
tenced to pay the penalty of pauperism or crime 
because he has not disobeyed the injunction of 
nature to preserve life, and given himself up to 
starve. 

This I will let suffice for the dispensing of 
an idea of the methods and results of unfair 
distribution, with the hope that it will find its 
use in making easier to understand what is to 
follow. 



In what has gone before the ill experiences are 
given as borne by employes for the sake of sim- 
plicity and not because it is held that hired 
laborers alone suffer from unfair distribution. 
The evil effects of unfair distribution are visited 
upon everybody, the ordinary farmers, mer- 
chants, manufacturers and upon those who are the 
recipients of the earnings extorted from the 
common people. An unfair distribution of earn- 
ings, no difference how made, whether through 
unfair taxation or unfair price, or otherwise, 
affects society in the same disastrous man- 
ner. At the expense of some repetition, 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 



27 



this part of the introduction being written 
since the writing of the balance of the work, 
I will give some more of the events growing out 
of unfair distribution. Again for sake of simplicity 
I will treat them from the single stand-point of 
unfair exchange through the instrumentalit}^ 
of monopoly. 

First. The authors of monopoly force a 
system of self-denial and stupor of trade upon 
the balance of society. 

Those who combine industries into the 
form of monopoly carry out the purposes 
of their combinations by over-charging for 
the commodities and services which they 
sell, and under-paying for the commod- 
ities and services which they buy. The 
effect of this practice is to leave the balance of 
society less than the full share of its earnings. 
If the people who compose the balance of society 
are deprived of a share of their earnings, then, 
they must do with less of the means of welfare 
than full earnings will buy and less business must 
be done to satisfy common demands. The peo- 
ple must do with fewer and poorer houses, barns 
and fences, and lumber and hardware merchants 
must sell less lumber, nails and building material. 
The people must do with fewer suits and 
dresses, and clothing and dry goods merchants 
must sell less garment and drapery stuffs. The 



28 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION 

people must skimp in the kind and variety of 
their food, and flour dealers and grocery men 
must do a poorer trade, butchers must sell less 
meat, farmers less wheat and fat steers, and 
gardeners less garden truck. The people must 
cut short in their pleasures and enjoyments, and 
dealers in carriages and musical instruments 
must do only half the business they might have 
done had the pubHc been allowed to retain the 
full share of their winnings. In short, if only a 
fraction of earnings is left with the balance of 
society, then the balance of society can only en- 
joy a fraction of earnings and tradesmen can have 
only a fraction of trade with its profits. This 
is self-denial and stupor of trade. . 

If this self-denial and stupor of trade served 
any good purpose whatever to the monopolists 
there might be some justification for its enforce- 
ment ; but it does not, as will be made presently 
to appear. 

Second. The authors of monopoly indulge in 
useless piling up of products. The piling up of 
products occurs from this fact. I have stated 
that the authors of monopoly force a system of 
self-denial upon all the rest of society. What 
does this system of self-denial mean ? It means 
that the balance of society do not consume the 
full amount of their earnings. What do those 
earnings consist of ? They consist of the pro- 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 29 

ducts of their effort — the kimber, food, clothing 
and every thing else produced for the satisfac- 
tion of man. The balance of society consumes 
but a part of their earnings, because the monopo- 
lists set such prices for them in their dealings 
with them as to allow them opportunity to get 
but a part of their earnings. The earnings 
which the balance of society does not consume, 
must then pile up. 

But, says one, cannot the monopolists con- 
sume them.? Certainly not. Their own ho7ia 
fide earnings, the part which would be left them 
if there was a fair deal^ suffices for their con- 
sumption, both of personal and capital wants. 
This, which they get b}^ overcharging and un- 
derpaying, is a gain^ something that falls into 
their possession over and above the bona fide 
earnings which they themselves make. They 
may and do make way with some of these gains 
by indulging in extravagancies, but they cannot? 
with the utmost extravagance, make way with 
all their gains, their number being too small as 
compared with the number they are gaining 
from. It is probable that fifty thousand would 
include the number of monopolists in the United 
States. An even estimate of the balance of 
earners is twenty million persons. If these fifty 
thousand monopolists gained an average of 25 
cents per day from each of the twenty million 



30 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

earners, it would give to each of the monopolists 
above his own legitimate earnings, a gained sum 
equalling upon the average, $ioo per day, or 
$30,000 per year. This large sum they cannot 
consume in addition to their own legitimate earn- 
ings, and it is not probable that their gains are 
even as small as this sum. 

This gain must pile up and take the name 
that it is commonly known by, which is, " Over- 
production." Over-production consists as follows : 
On hand, of the monopolists' own make, pro- 
ducts which would not have been left on their 
hands had they let their wares go at earned val- 
uations; in the possession of the monopolists, by 
actual or debt claim, of the peoples' make, pro- 
ducts which they would not have got had they 
taken in the peoples' wares at earned valua- 
tions. 

Over-production always stands opposed to 
scarcity. That is, because over-production and 
scarcity have one and the same cause. When 
you rob 20,000,000 citizens of a large share 
of their earnings, then we must hear the com- 
plaint of scarcity. When you turn these earn- 
ings over to another 50,000 citizens, then we 
must hear the complaint of over-production. 
But the passing of earnings out of the hands of 
one set into the hands of another set is a single 
operation. That is why plenty and scarcity go 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 3 1 

together and have the same cause. The mon- 
opolists cause such a division of earnings as to 
give themselves too much, while they leave the 
balance of society too little. That is why we 
have over-production always side by side with 
destitution. 

I have stated that this piling up of products 
was a useless piling up of products. This we 
shall presently see. 

Third. The monopolists force, check and 
stoppage of production, with its hardships, until 
their gains or over-productions can be disposed 
of. It has been shown that the gains of the 
monopolists simply pile up — accumulate upon 
the shelves and in the bins of warehouses and 
in storage yards. In time every storing place 
is filled to overflowing. Then what is done.^ 
There is stop put to production. Manufactur- 
ing, mining and productive concerns which have 
these surpluses are closed until these surpluses 
can be disposed of. Men are stopped from work, 
and those that are poor are thrown upon the 
charities of the public or driven into crime to 
get the wherewithal to sustain life. 

Here, I ask, where was the wisdom in piling up 
this stuff if production must cease for the sake of 
getting it consumed.^ Has any good purpose, 
whatever^ been subserved.^ All society, outside of 
the monopolists, have been forced to practice a 



32 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

• 

system of self-denial, more or less stringent, that 
an over-production might be saved. Now they 
must be forced to undergo a period of industrial 
depression, with its dangers and hardships, that 
this over-production maybe consumed. Would 
it not have been better had we indulged in plen- 
teous consumption of our productions along as 
we created them, and thus avoided the occa- 
sion for stoppage, industrial depression and 
hard times .^ We have, in effect, been forced to 
work five years and to be idle one year, with 
the result of a poor living six 3^ears« Would it 
not have been better for us to have kept a brisk 
activity for the whole six years and enjoyed all 
we could produce in that time ? We work that 
we may have a living, and as good a one as we 
can get. Then, why should we work five years, 
and be idle one, and lose the comforts that the 
year of idleness fails to bring forth? 

If the monopolist is looking for riches alone, 
would he not get more of it by six continuous 
years upon a smaller margin than by the present 
course with excessive margins ? I ajgi convinced 
that any one who will take time to examine the 
subject must answer in the affirmative. I may 
proceed to another fact. 

Fourth. The authors of monopolies waste our 
earnings in useless over-investments. The great 
o-ains which the monopolists make are not all 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 33 

put into the forms of over-production. Another 
name for their great gains is profits — extra prof- 
its. A portion of this extra profit is used by the 
monopolists to increase the size and capacity of 
their industries. But the increase which they 
make is a misappHcation of capital. Why? By 
producing more another year, without changing 
their terms of dealing with the public, as they 
do not, they only add to the amount which goes 
into over-production. Why, then, do the mon- 
opolists increase the capacity of their industries? 
Because capital is always crazy for investment. 
These monopolists want their enormous profits 
to be doing something, and to enlarge industries 
already over-large, is the only chance they see 
to make an investment that promises anything 
in the shape of reward. 

But to enlarge industries that are already 
overlarge — is not that a waste of earnings ? That 
money which has gone to double the needed 
capacity of our factories, mines and railroads — 
would not a more wise investment of a share of 
this capital have been in farmers' barns, labor- 
ers' houses and homes, struggling merchants' ex- 
penses, poor peoples' clothes — in fact, where it 
could have been fully used instead of half used ? 
Should the lumber manufacturers profit to such 
an extent as to force the people to do with in- 
sufficient buildings, while they double the coun. 



34 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

try's needs for saw and planing mills? Should 
three-fourths of the people of the Union be forced 
to curtail in their wearing apparel in order that 
a few manufacturers can boast of a manufac- 
turing capacity sufficient to supply the world? 
Do we earn that we may enjoy as we need to 
enjoy, or do we earn that some men may make 
a grand and vain display? 

I think the burden of complaints heard around 
us should convince us that, though there is a 
one-sided getting of wealth and development of 
industries, yet nobody is satisfied with it — neither 
the s^ainers nor the losers. The cotton and 

CD 

woollen manufacturers' wail is, *' What shall we 
do to find a market for our surplus cloths and 
calicoes?" The workmen's wail is, "What 
shall we do to keep ourselves, wives and chil- 
dren from nakedness? " The lumberman com- 
plains, " What shall I do to get rid of m}' enor- 
mous stacks of lumber?" The farmer com- 
plains, " What shall I do for the means to pro- 
tect my stock from the storms of winter? " The 
stockholders of the railroads say, '' How are we 
going to make our enormous capital in railroad 
extensions pay?" The masses say, " What are 
we to do for capital to run our industries with?" 
The monopolists, in concert, say, " What are 
- we going to do with our enormous profits and 
idle money?" The balance of society, in con- 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 35 

cert, say, ^' How are we to raise the means to 
make our affairs come out so that both ends 
will meet?" The monopolists have overloaded 
themselves with facilities for doing and stuffs to 
sell, and have done it by impoverishing those 
whom they looked to do for and sell to. They 
have overleaped bounds and ruined their market 
in the process of getting ready for it. In con- 
sequence, they have got themselves into a situa- 
tion that has set them to complaining as loudly 
as the rest of the public. It worries them as 
much not to be able to sell to and perform for 
the public as it does the public not to be able to 
patronize them. 

We now see what is the secret of our troubles. 
Since the one side complains of having too much 
and the other side of having too little, the great 
trouble is because of unfair distribution of earn- 
ings. The monopolists want to rapidly enrich 
themselves, but they are proceeding too greedily 
and it is giving them constant dissatisfaction. 
They want to trade largely with the people, but 
they dictate such one-sided terms as to exhaust 
the peoples' means before much trading has been 
done. They want to force the people to live 
upon little, but to buy much at the same time, 
and because it cannot be done they only get 
themselves into trouble. They cannot sell much 
to the people if they charge such high prices as 



36 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION 

to enable the people to buy but little. The doc- 
trine of long hours and starvation wages will 
never produce anything but a thorn to its best 
friends. 

If the monopolists continue on in their policy 
of over-investing what must eventually be the 
shape of their industries and that of the condition 
ot the people? First, their own industries will be 
five times as large as the people need, while the 
people will be so poor as to be able to wear noth- 
ino- but bear coverings, and to eat nothing but 
the cheapest sort of adulterations. Secondly, the 
monopolists themselves will be forced to a cheap 
living, since it will take all they can get out of 
their large railroads and factories and all they 
can get out of the people also to keep their over- 
sized railroads and factories in form and repair. 
Their big industries will be like elephants on 
their hands, taking all the animals can earn 
and all they can steal besides to keep them alive. 
When that time comes many railroad lines will 
be abandoned to the rust and many factories 
will be given up to the rats and hooting owls. 

Fifth. The authors of monopoly cause to fall 
into their own possessions the capital of the bal- 
ance of the members of society. It has been 
stated that the monopolists force check and stop- 
page, when surpluses accrue, until they can rid 
themselves of their over-productions. We may 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 37 

now ask, whom do they unload their over-pro- 
ductions upon? The answer is, upon the gene- 
ral public of course. There lacks place of lodg- 
ment else for them; besides,the public must subsist 
when they are gaining nothing as well as when 
they are gaining something. The merchant 
must eat, clothe and shelter himself as well when 
his sales are dull and he is falling behind as when 
he has a brisk trade, and is doing well. The 
laborer must eat when he is idle as well as when 
he is at work. 

How are the public to pay for these over-pro- 
ductions, seeing that their low compensation did 
not permit them to buy the stuffs during the pro- 
cess of their creation ? Cut off from the power 
to buy them at one time how are the people to 
buy them at another time.^ 

The only way that the people can pay for 
these over-productions is by having recourse up- 
on their original capital. The merchant must 
subsist upon his original stock of goods instead of 
upon the profits he expects to make from sales. 
The farmer must sell off some of his land, or 
mortgage it, to pay for the share of over-produc- 
tion he buys back. The laborer must part with 
his house and lot. If he has no house or lot, then 
the public must be taxed to support him in the 
soup-house, poor-house or penitentiary. 

To conclude upon this last fact, I simply state 



38 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

this proposition, which is obvious enough to need 
no explanation. Extortion, through the instru- 
mentality of monopoly, consists in gaining away 
portions of our earnings along as we create 
them, then of forcing us to take back these earn- 
ings and yielding up our capital in exchange for 
them. The policy, of course, can only end in 
reducing our children, or our children's 'children 
at furthest, to a state of poverty and servitude. 



CHAPTER -I. 



man's mission on earth. 



Man has been established upon earth with a 
design looking foremost to the self-preservation, 
enjo3^ment and development of himself while 
here. This we judge to be so because he has 
implanted within him an irresoluble want or in- 
clination to achieve and realize such a design, 
and because such a want or inclination would not 
have been implanted within him had it not been 
meant to effect such an achievement and realiza- 
tion. This disposition or want, repeating itself 
under a different phase in the disposition or want 
to do what will conduce to the preservation, en- 
joyment and development of self, is a force with- 
in man which he cannot annul or contrarize. 
Man cannot want, or want to educe, harm or 
misery to self or an abridgment in the number 
of days of his sojourn upon earth, for he is not con- 
stituted so to want and as he is constituted so he 
must manifest himself. He may and does seek 



40 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

that which to himself is harmful, but he does 
.not do so out of preference or under the thought 
that he is doing himself injury ; he does so only 
when he is working under false impressions as to 
results or under morbid conditions of self. All 
the rational and clear-sighted acts of man are 
favorable to the end judged to be that of man's 
purpose upon earth, and guided by the best 
judgment he can command, he directs his energies 
toward the constant accomplishment of this pur- 
pose, not persistently merely, but with a vigor that 
marks one of the chief characteristics in living 
beings. He is impelled by his disposition to pre- 
serve and prolong his life with all the energy and 
diplomacy he can command, to minister to his 
enjoyments with a prolific hand and to develop 
himself by all the means within his power. 

It is thus he is led to perform the duties he is 
to perform as coming within the pale of responsi- 
bilities he is made to assume toward fitting him- 
self for his future state. 

Whatever aids man in carr3'ing out his design 
upon earth, is right; whatever opposes it, is 
wrong. This we conceive to be so because it 
harmonizes with his duties as involved in the 
belief, based upon our experiences, that nature 
has not set up parts of herself in such a fashion 
as to antagonize other parts of herself, but has 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 4I 

made all things to act in unison one with the 
other. 

By the development of man we mean his im- 
provement in the art of ministering to his self- 
preservation and enjoyment. Man wants to live 
long and well, and as there is a chance for im- 
provement in this art he desires to avail himself 
of it, the longest life filled with the greatest 
measure of enjoyment conducing most to the 
complete satisfaction of himself. 

As a rule what is applied practically for the 
sustenance and preservation of the body, affords 
enjoyment as well, and what is applied to afford 
in the main enjoyment, contributes through that 
enjoyment to the self-preservation of man. Food, 
man eats with a principal view of affording life, 
and health and strength of body, but he does not 
consume food in blank unfeelingness. There is 
a pleasure in eating food. Exercise and rest must 
be had to maintain the soundness of the system, 
but aside from this use of them there is a real 
pleasure in exercise and rest. To enter the 
category of things considered as of pleasure 
wholly, as music and sight seeing. . They answer 
a purpose more than that of mere pleasure. They 
accelerate the bodil}' functions, invigorate the 
system and thus conduce to prolong life. As what 
satisfies the one want of man does so no less 
effectually on account of its contributing to 



42 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION.^ 

satisfy the other want, man can claim to be fortu- 
nate in having things minister doubly to the 
satisfaction of himself. 

The purpose of man's creation; the long living 
comfort, happiness and advancement of man; the 
welfare of man; the right doing of man; his duty 
to himself; his wants, in an enHghtened manner 
understood; his inclination in behalf of himself; 
the real interest of himself ; his proper self-interest, 
are all homogeneous terms, phrases expressive of 
a train of ideas in unison with a central concept- 
ion which is this: a justification of whatever is 
calculated, really and unequivocally and without 
misapprehension, to lengthen out the days of man 
and to swell the measure and intensity of his 
joys. These and all expressions of a kindred 
strain are delivered in the interest ot the object 
indexed by his sympathies and will as being the 
object of his earthly career. It is in the sense 
that the welfare of man consists in the sustain- 
ment and happiness of him that these phrases are 
universally used and understood by man, because 
his nature, reason and experience forbid him to 
conceive that he has been placed here for any 
other purpose. Following such a conception as 
this must be the one that of all the devices em" 
ployed by man for the attainment of, and experi- 
ence in, these purposes of his existence, none 
can be considered irrational or blameworthy, 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 43 

none can be justifiably characterized as extrava- 
gant, let them elicit results never so profuse, so 
they are of a kind fitted to really promote these 
purposes, for these are the purposes of his exist- 
ance, the ends he was created to accomplish as 
coming within the pale of responsibilities he was 
made to assume in order to the accomplishing 
of still more ultimate ends of himself, and the 
more fully he accomplishes these ends the more 
full}' does he fulfill the purpose of his creation — 
that is, act out his part here, and his duties 
to himself. 

AGENCIES OR MEANS. 

Man does not execute his mission without the 
application and impropriation of agencies or 
means. Thus when we say that man preserves 
his life and health we signify among other things 
that he employs food, drink and raiment in the 
operation; that he exercises himself, rests and 
sleeps. Without agencies or means, or, as other- 
wise called, wants adapted to the promotion of 
man's mission upon earth, there could not be 
man's mission, because no man, he not being sub- 
sistive independent of his resources. Man 
depends upon food and drink, upon raiment and 
shelter, upon air and sunshine, upon things vital 
and things not vital, upon things requiring task 
and those requiring no task to make him what 



44 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

he is and what he is to be. It is these that are 
applied by himself to his person and are inbibed 
by his person with the view to extend his hold 
upon his life, to give to himself comfort and en- 
joyment and to grant to himself the development 
or advancement of himself. When supplied 
with an adequacy of these, his agencies, means 
or wants, the purpose of his creation is promoted 
to the highest degree. 

Some things come to man thoroughly fitted in 
the natural state to serve him, as the sunshine 
and air of free space. These are essential to his 
welfare but compose but a part of things essen- 
tial to him. Much that is needed by him must 
go through the ordeal of task before it is fitted for 
his use. Such are bread, clothes, houses and 
everything we see which has been fashioned by 
man out of the materials of the earth. For the 
fashioning of these things there has been called 
into practical application the agency of exertion, 
essential in and of itself to give health and 
strength and pleasure to the system. After ex- 
ertion comes rest and leisure and sleep, made 
sweet by virtue of exertion, and these complete 
the round of agencies which conduce to the self- 
preservation and enjoyment of man. 

The agencies which conduce to the welfare of 
man we may now classify, in order to a more 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 



45 



thorough explanation and understanding of them. 
They are: 

1. Things ready in the natural or primitive 
state to be appropriated by him, as the air of free 
space, the light and warmth of the sun, the 
water running at his feet. 

2. Things made ready from unready material 
in the natural state. These compose all the 
products of man's industr}', the wealth of his toil 
acquired by him for the support of himself. 

3. Exertion of mind and body. It is by the 
exertion of man that tangible acquisitions for the 
use of him are made to arise, comprising the 
second class of agencies. But exertion becomes 
a third agency by contributing to the needs of 
man on its own account and irrespective of the 
tangible acquisitions summoned through it, Man 
must undergo exertion to give to himself health 
and strength and tone of system, and to work off 
the regularly recurring uneasiness which arise 
within the system and which have for their anti- 
dote,exertion. 

4. Things partaking of a restorative character 
as rest, leisure, and sleep. Exertion, as an agency 
of itself answers its purpose in exhausting and 
tiring parts of the system when there comes into 
need an agency of a reactionary or recuperative 
sort. Opposed to the day of activity, there is the 
night of sleep; opposed to toil, rest; opposed to 



46 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

application, recreation; opposed to the active 
effort for supply, the passive enjoyment of 
supply. 

In these four classes are included all of the 
agencies or wants of man considered as being 
pre-supplied with the earth for an abode. The 
classification is based upon peculiarities predom- 
inant in each set and will aid in the elucidation 
of our subject. 

These different classes, we observe, occupy 
different relationshipsto man. The first are pure 
gratuities of nature. They come to him with- 
out call or help, and with all are so perfect for 
the purposes they are designed to answer that no 
improvement in them could be supposed. They 
are as essential to him as any that occupy a 
place upon his list of wants, but they cause him 
no care to assure their coming or to assure their 
suitableness for him. They are perfectly satis- 
factory to man. 

To the others are attached man's great solici- 
tude and concern as being wants which he, fixed 
so as to be largely the responsible architect of his 
own fortune, must satisfactorily work out for him- 
self if they are to be satisfactorily worked out at 
all. In the present stage of his existence these 
wants are lacking. They are not thoroughly 
satisfactory to him. They are pervaded with 
imperfections. But while this is true it is also true 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 47 

that these imperfections are not unsusceptible of 
mitiofative and even of oblll^rative influences at 
the hand of man. In this fact there is supplied a 
hope and a solace for man as being a creature 
disposed to be gratified and to be rid of all imper- 
fections attending his means of gratification. If 
we discover the exact condition of existence and 
relationship to man, of the wants which are de- 
pendent upon him for their coming and condition 
we will be possessed of a clearer conception of 
what are the things which go to make up the 
real problem man is to solve in order to the com. 
plete welfare of himself, and why it is his tenden- 
cies are bent always and tenaciously into a one 
single direction or course of pursuing. 

The first of these three self-regulative wants 
of man, that is the second in the list, or task made 
means, stand related to man in this way: the 
task for their supply must proceed from him. 
His is the task by which they are made to 
appear. 

This is in accordance with the theory of crea- 
tion, universally encountered, that whatever is 
sustained by the help of task must be the author 
of the task which helps to sustain it. The bird 
which would have food, to be used as a means' 
of support of itself, must make itself a means for 
procuring that food. The wild beast must be 
itself the seeker of its prey; the plant must be 



48 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION- 

itself the accumulator of the sap which enters into 
its growth. Man is.>no exception to the conse. 
quences of this rule. Standing in need of task- 
made means to fulfill the purpose of his creation 
it devolves upon him to expend the task for their 
procurement. 

The task which man undergoes for the procure- 
ment of his task-supplied means is another want 
of his, coming under the head of the third class 
of wants, and stands related to him as means, not 
consisting of outward things to be applied by 
himself unto himself, but as means arising within 
and that are to be imbibed by himself through 
the energy of himself. That provision in the econ- 
omy of nature which makes the existence of man's 
need also an instrumentality for supplying another 
need, does not make the exertion less satisfactory 
on that account, but more so. Exertion under 
gone to satisfy the muscular need of contraction 
and relaxation, and the mind's need of attention 
and concentration, is enhanced in its pawer to 
satisfy in its special field by reason of its leading 
to satisfaction in another field. Anyone who will 
take the trouble to study the subject, will be 
convinced that the productive feature of exertion 
gives to it pungency and zest, -and constitutes in 
other respects a very important part of the virtue 
in exertion, as exertion, to satisfy. 

Exertion of this sort is what we call by the 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 49 

name of work, toil, labor. It occupies a double 
relationship to man. It satisfies a craving that 
can only be satisfied by things existing within, 
and it is a means of granting to him things 
needed to satisfy cravings of his which can only 
be satisfied by the application of things existing 
from without. 

The last class of agencies are like the class 
just above in this : they are agencies to be had as 
they are undergone or to be enjoyed simultane- 
ously as they are developed through certain 
manipulations of the body, but they are unlike 
this same class above in this, they are not a means 
of supplying for other wants. They have no 
results beyond satisfying the single desires they 
are designed to satisfy. Rest and sleep produce 
man nothing from without, but he must have 
them just as much as if they did. He wants also 
leisure and recreation, and the exertion that is 
for pastime instead of. profit, and that calls into 
play a new set of activities to exert an influence 
in restoring to freshness and vigor the long used 
and tired activities. This class of wants would 
come under the head of idleness, and we can say 
man wants idleness as well as work. 

LACKS AND TENDENCIES. 

These three classes of wants, just gone over, 
are imperfect, unsatisfactory to man, not calcu- 



50 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

lated to conduce thoroughly to his welfare. In 
what respect are thus lacking or deficient: 

1. There is too little of the fruits of toil. 

2. There is required an excess of toil. 

3. There is too little of the period of idleness or 
relief from toil. 

These lacks are evils to mankind. They are 
drawbacks to the promotion of the purpose of 
his exis'tence. What is the way to mitigation or 
avoidance of these evils .^ 

The way is through increased efficacy of 
effort; through making labor more productive 
by degrees. That gives us more fruits for the 
same toil, or makes requisite less toil for the 
same fruits, or works betterments as it is apt to 
be made to do both wa3^s, and when there is less 
toil required it is an improvement in the last de- 
partment of wants. 

Now inasmuch as increased productiveness or 
labor enhances the welfare of man,, and his wel- 
fare is the cardinal desire of his being, with what 
view uppermost are we always to find man pur- 
suing.^ 

With the view uppermost always to accomplish 
the most possible with a given amount of effort, 
or, as equivalently stated, to accomplish any given 
thing with the least possible amount of effort. This 
is his cardinal tendency: to adopt that line and 
policy of conduct which will • conspire most to 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 



5^ 



satisfy his wants for material things or means on 
the one side without detracting incongruously 
from his wants for rest, recreation and saving of 
health and strength on the other side. He does 
not court absolute idleness. We do not try to con- 
vey any such meaning. It is an opinion common- 
ly held, however, that he does wish that — that he 
would like wholly to be in possession of a plenty 
of the fruits of effort, and to be excused wholly 
from undergoing effort, in the procurement of 
them. But this is an erronous opinion, and arises 
from confounding exertion with over-Qxertion. ^ 
The fact is, man wants exertion no less than he 
wants the fruits of exertion. Exertion is as essen- 
tial to the welfare of man, exertion at labor, as 
any other thing that is listed among his means 
of welfare. But man desires his exertion to be, 
as he desires all his other agencies to be, in 
quantity and in kind suited to conduce to his wel- 
fare. He wants so much for instance, as condu- 
ces to the invigoration and strengthening of the 
system, but not so much as tires inordinately and 
annoys and cripples and so produces an opposed 
effect. Idleness is irksome to man, as irksome 
as overwork. In moderate toil is man's needs 
and pleasureable feelings, that are dependent 
upon mental and bodily activity, answered. When 
man has reached that station of advance in 
which all his varying wants for toil-made wealth 



52 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

can be supplied through the moderate exercise 
of his mind and body, then will he have reached 
the goal of his ambition to self -satisfy. He will 
then revel in the possession of a full measure in 
all his wants. Linked with the gratuitous wants of 
nature, which are always aright, there will be so 
much of material products as he shall have a 
desire tb apply, procurable through so much of 
effort as he shall have a real desire to undergo, 
and as leaves unintrenchedupon so much of time 
as is wanted to be undergone in relief from toil. 
All these he will have, toil among the rest, but 
the toil so potentized that what is wanted of it 
will bring and leave what is wanted of the others 
reared or left to grow out of it. 

Now a little further upon this same topic that 
we may not be misled by expressions employed. 
It is thoroughly proper to say that man wants to 
do all that is in his power to forward the purpose 
of his existence, because when we say this we 
do not mean, as is often thought, that he wants 
to undergo all the exertion his system can bear 
to procure effort-induced things, productions of 
labor, for himself. We mean that he wants to do 
all in his power to make so much exertion as he 
desires to undergo, bring him so much of effort- 
induced things as he desires to have, whence all 
will be right for him. These meanings must be 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 53 

kept clearly cut in the mind to obviate confusion. 
Let us go over the ground of man's wants for 
sake of a clear understanding. 

Man wants the self-preservation, enjoyment 
and development of himself. As he cannot have 
these without agencies or means(and called wants) 
adapted to the accomplishment of them, he de* 
sires to possess the agencies or means required for 
their accomplishment. As he cannot possess these 
agencies or means, or a large part of them at 
least, through non-attempt, he desires to *do that 
which will put him in possession of them. That 
ig he desires to do that which will give hir» as 
much exercise in toil as he needs, as much leis- 
ure or relief fromtoilas he needs,and as much toil 
made things as he needs to accompany as much 
of the gratuities of nature as he needs, but here- 
in we have a case of the use of the verb "to do," 
in which it is not by great odds to be construed 
as signifying nothing but laborious effort; it is 
to be interpreted as signifying to a large extent 
exactly to the contrary — the avoidance of labor- 
ious effort. And it is in this sense that we are 
to understand man's efforts to satisfy himself. 

Now if we have arrived at a clear conception 
of what are man's real wants, and how are to be 
construed his desires to do, and I trust that I 
have conveyed the idea, if not in the best fash- 
ion, at any rate conveyed it, we are ready to go 



54 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

back to man's great tendency, described again as 
the propensity to render most efficacious at all 
times the labor bestowed in given cases, or 
which is the same in meaning, to render least 
extensive the effort required in special cases 
This tendency is identical with the desire of 
man for self-promotion, and to have what will 
promote him, and to do what will promote him, 
as just explained, it being merely a manifestation 
of the desire under that phase which consists in 
the selection and adoption of a particular method 
of promoting his welfare. There are other 
phases of the desire to be noticed as we proceed. 
This desire is known under its various phases and" 
shades of meaning as the principle of self-preser- 
vation, self-protection and so on, more commonly 
as self-interest, and it is a ruling force in man^ 
over-masterino^ all his other forces. Manifesting: 

CD C> 

itself under that particular phase of itself repre- 
sented by the tendency just under discussion, it is 
a force which actuates man into stern adhesion to 
a one steady policy of operating, viz: the poHcy of 
going where he can get the most with given ex- 
penditure, and it does this all the while there is an 
active body enveloping the force. As such a 
force it has so much to do with the destiny of 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 55 

man, is a cause leading to such momentous con- 
sequences, that I desire to call the reader's spec- 
ial attention to its existence and nature. For it 
is the force which propels man into the accom- 
plishment of his welfare or ill-fare according as 
the conditions under which he operates are right 
or wrong. 

We now see that man desires to potentize his 
labor because his deficiencies as to his satisfac- 
tionsarise from impotenc}^ of his labor. If his 
deficiencies arose from some other cause he 
would desire to eradicate the other cause, what- 
ever it was, and his tendency would be in some 
other direction suited to the eradication of this 
cause. As it is now, superior potency ot labor 
is what is needed. Man, or mankind, has never 
experienced the time when he could procure 
more of the fruits of toil than he desired to pos- 
sess with less exertion than he desired to under- 
go. Or, as stated after the manner in which we 
must interpret his rational desires, he has never 
experienced the time when he could procure 
m.ore than was good for him with less effort than 
was good for him. It has always been entirely 
the reverse with him. But he has within him- 
self the power to increase his productiveness, and 
each step in this sort of advance is a step toward 
the betterment of his condition. He earns more 
comforts, or needs not to work so hard to get 



56 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

necessary comforts, or he shares betterments both 
ways and in all ways. He desires betterments, 
so we see why he works for betterments. This 
he will continue to do until he has brought him- 
self up to a state of perfection in regard to his 
wants, if that be possible, when it can be expec- 
ted that he will stand on the alert to maintain 
that degree of potency in his efforts which 
conduces to entire satisfaction, for alertness will 
be required as much to maintain the proper de. 
gree, and to prevent retrograde, as it was re- 
quired in the first place to attain to it, and man 
will always be on the alert to grant entire satis- 
faction to himself. Nor is the alertness, as a 
thing of itself wanted to be avoided, for there is 
a pungent pleasure in watching for one's best 
good. » 



CHAPTER II. 

METHODS OF WEALTH GETTING. 

We have seen that man tends to provide for 
himself as best he possibly can, and that this is 
done by maximumizing his productiveness, or, 
as some may better understand it, by .operating 
in such a manner as to occasion tq himself the 
greatest profit. Man resorts to various devices 
in order to achieve the greatest results. These 
devices we may divide into two classes : the 
justifiable and the unjustifiable. The justifiable 
devices are those which really conduce to the 
welfare of man, and consist in attempts to over- 
come the forces of nature. The unjustifiable 
devices are those which do not conduce to the 
welfare of man, but to the contrary, and they 
consist in attempts to profit one fellow at the ex- 
pense of another fellow. 

There are but two ways in which an indivi- 
dual can come into the possession of wealth, as 
the fruits of toil are commonly called. 



5^ UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

1. By producing it out of natural resources. 

2. By exacting it off one's fellow after the 
latter has produced it. 

Profiting by producing out of the natural re- 
sources is earning wealth, and such wealth is 
appropriately called earnings. Profiting by ex- 
acting from one's fellow is not earning wealth, 
and the wealth so procured must be character- 
ized by some other term than that of earnings. 

EARNINGS. 

By reference to the classified list of agencies 
on a previous page, we observe that some con- 
sist of things to be impropriated by man from 
without, as the sun, air, food, clothes; that others 
are things which he gets from within, through 
certain manifestations of the body, as exertion, 
rest. Of the means which have their sources 
outward we notice that some of them, like the 
sun and air, come to him ready in their primi- 
tive state for his use, but that others are such as . 
have gone through the ordeal of task in order to 
a rendering of them available by him, the task 
proceeding from him. Now, what do the 
task-made things consist of ? The}^ consist 
of modified natural elements. They are things 
which once existed in a raw state, but which 
have undergone a change in form and place cal- 
culated to answer man's needs. If they had not 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. ^ 59 

previously existed in a raw state they could not 
subsequently have existed in any form because 
man cannot produce something from nothing, he 
can only -modif}^ Task-made things then are 
but prepared or modified things. They ma}^ be 
things that have passed through a series of mod- 
ifications before being made ready for man's im- 
mediate use, or they may be things not ready 
but under way of completion, but in such 
case, find them in what stage we may, 
they are always traceable backward to the 
raw materials resting in or upon the earth, for 
from thence must all things for the use of man 
first arise, or else arise not at all. Holding the 
terms to that construction which implies real 
production of wealth, then, there is only one 
kind of definition for the word earning, — It is 
profiting by overcoming the forces of nature. 
Or, it is the task of preparing things out of other 
things, based upon a beginning with the primitive 
elements, for the use of man. Or, it is chang- 
ing things from the forms and situations unavail- 
able to man into forms and situations available 
to him. Or, it is the attack of man upon nature 
to force portions of herself to assume conditions, 
formations and locations best adapted to be laid 
hold upon and utilized by man. Under such a 
construction it becomes true that every venture 
of man which results in rendering something 



6o ^ UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

« 

readier to be applied by man for the immediate 
satisfaction of himself than it was before, is an 
act of earning. Also, that every act of earning 
adds to the sum of things or eases with which a 
man satisfies himself. Also, that any act which 
makes no addition to wealth in any way, but con- 
sists of a mere giving out of one hand into an- 
other is not an act of earning. 

By this last method of procuring wealth, viz: 
exacting off one's fellows, we cannot say there 
is literally no addition anywhere. There is ad- 
dition, but it is addition to one man's portion, 
made by subtraction from another man's propor- 
tion. But this gives nothing to man in the com- 
pact, or society as a whole. 

Between these two sources from which man 
obtains wealth, he has no choice. He must earn 
it in a contest with nature, or he must, exact it 
from his fellow man, the immaterial quantities in 
free gifts excepted. 

The justifiableness and unjustifiableness of 
wealth-getting in each of these two methods will 
be made to appear in the discussions to follow. 
At this instant we will suppose that all persons 
turn to exacting off one another, and none en- 
gage more in producing new wealth from 
nature. What would follow ? As the consump- 
tion of wealth for immediate personal satisfaction 
could not cease, it would only be a question of 



UNFAIR • DISTRIBUTION. 6 1 

time when all should reach the point of indigence, 
then perish for want of subsistence. It is plain 
from this that there is no merit, but actual des- 
truction, in the entire subsistence of the people 
off one another. 

We can look into the conditions which con- 
spire to promote a people's welfare and if we 
find that under no conditions can the}' produce 
more from nature than they can utilize' for the 
benefit of themselves, then any other method of 
getting wealth by any individual than that of 
producing it from nature, than that of rendering 
something less near to the form and place of its 
primitiveness or birth, and more near to the form 
and place adapted to the use of man, is thoroughly 
unjustifiable. For if no other harm resulted there 
would be this much harm, society has lost of the 
chance to realize a benefit that might have been 
hers, had the individual's effort been properly 
expended. 

This harm to society is not to be measured 
wholly, however, by what might have been her 
gain from the proper direction of the effort of the 
individual. It is to be measured by the addition 
to the loss from inexperienced benefits, of all the 
evil consequences growing out of the exactions 
of individuals off other individuals. The notice 
of these consequences we shall defer until after a 
notice of some pre-fequisite topics. 



62 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 



NO CONTRADICTION. 

We have adopted the theory that man's mis- 
sion upon earth, the part he is to perform toward 
advancing himself toward some more ultimate 
end had in view by his Creator, is to be judged 
by his inclinations, by what he .is disposed to 
have and to do for himself. This theory would 
have no support if we did not look be3^ond man's 
feal acts and resorts. Man resorts to measures 
both justifiable and unjustifiable; that is, he em- 
ploys measures that work harm to him as well 
as measures that work good to him. Here 
is apparently contradiction. But this appearance 
of contradiction is dispelled just as soon as we 
look a little further and discover that the intent 
of man, whatever the devices he employs, is to 
work good to himself, and that he does not work 
against what we claim to be his mission out of 
preference, but does so under the delusion that 
he is working in harmony with that object. He 
sees what appears to him to be the gaining of a 
benefit. The real facts and consequences in the 
case are beyond the vision of his reason. There 
IS no rational person who would tell you that one 
set of citizens would follow the trade of plucking 
another set of citizens, if thev did not think that 
they "obtained genuine benefit thereby. 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 63 

WHY DOES MAN MISTAKE AND ENCROACH? 

A just apprehension of the nature of the reme- 
dial measures which should be employed for the 
abatement of an evil, can only succeed a just com- 
prehension of the nature of the causes which lead 
to the evil. A comparison of the results of 
proper provisions with the results of improper 
provisions, for the economic welfare of man, will 
lead to a clearer understanding of all that per- 
tains to the results and the economic welfare. 
For reasons such as these suggested, I prefer, 
before going further, to discover the cause or 
occasion of man's selection and acceptance of un- 
justifiable devices, and his willingness or unwill- 
ingness to forbear, to profit at the expense of a 
being whom we might be led to believe he would 
be deterred from harming, out of fellow-feeling 
and regard for an equal. 

The cause or occasion of these undesirable 
manifestations in man are, according to my 
views : 

1. The erroneousness of man. 

2. The preponderant strength of his self-in- 
terest. 



64 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 



ERRONEOUSNESS OF MAN. 

Man's mind is so constituted that he is liable 
to err in his estimates, both as to what are the 
best methods of gaining advantages and as to 
what are the best advantages when gained. He 
may start out for the purpose of alighting upon 
a coveted landing, and fail of success through 
lack of judgment in planing; or he may suc- 
ceed, but be resting then where a more enlight- 
ened judgment would reveal to him was an alto- 
gether undesirable position. He is a being that 
makes mistakes: 

Man may think that the gathering of the bulk 
of capital into the hands of a few leaders, with 
the great mass converted into a state of depend- 
ency, is the best form into which society can be 
organized, considering the nature and tendencies 
of men. Hence are willing that one class should 
exact, and another should be exacted from. 

Or, they may decline to concede that there is 
innate equality of rights among individuals, the 
idea of such individuals being that a class of 
selects are entitled to the superfluities of the 
earth, the balance having all their deserts when 
they have been left a sustenence. Such be- 
lievers call it justifiable, which we call unjustifi- 
able. 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 65 

Or, they may suppose that the concentration 
of capital is inevitable and unavoidable, and 
that the evils resulting therefrom, however much 
they are to be deplored, must be borne because 
they are inseparable concomitants of infallible 
concentration and cannot be evaded. Such try 
to make the best of the conditions they are in 
because they think it hopeless to try for aught 
else. 

Or, they may not believe that the evils ot 
society are superinduced by the exactions of 
man from man, but have their fountain head in 
some other source. Such have no fault to find 
with exaction because they think that is not 
what hurts them. 

Or, the individual who piles up untold millions 
in his name by the plunder of a nation may fond- 
ly imagine he is laying the foundation for his own 
grand welfare and that of his descendents for all 
time to come. That is why he persists in exac- 
ting. He does not perceive how his conduct re- 
flects to his disadvantage or foresee that he is. 
laying the foundation for the ultimate misfortune^ 
ruin and misery of his descendents by providing 
for the entire demoralization and destruction of 
the nation of which his progeny will form a 
part. If he did, unless his nature was entirely 
perverted by the monster breeding practice of ex 
action, he would cease wanting to exact. If he 



66 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

knew what the future, near and distant, proposed 
for him, in answer to his prevalent way of doing, 
and also knew, that under proper provisions for 
the regulation of society he would get rich none 
the less rapidly, only all others would not be ac- 
cumulating so slowly or be losing, he would ad- 
vocate a provison for the prevention of exaction. 
He persists in exacting because he sees no harm, 
but only good in it for him and his. 

Man may comprehend what is the real wel- 
fare of himself and what is the real cause of his 
ill-conditionedness, but fail to see his way to the 
promotion of the one and the extinction of the 
other. His incapacity enslaves him. 

These reasons, based upon his erroneousness, 
give one account of why man selects or accepts 
the undesirable devices of encroachment. 

It may here be asked by the less pretentious 
and self-esteeming, " May it not be true that we 
have our betters, and would it not be a crime to 
aspire to share with them the superfluities we 
are in the habit of helping to create but not in 
tasting the sweetness thereof .^" 

I say. No. Upon those who hold or teach 
this opinion, it is incumbent to show that there 
is a distinction in the innate rights of individuals. 
Until that is done, and satisfactorily, the taking 
on of superiorness and preferment under the doc- 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 67 

trine is an unwarranted and outrageous assump- 
tion. 

What grounds there are for basing a distinc- 
tion upon is not apparent. That there should 
be a disparity in the rights of individuals looks 
to be out of all harmony with what would be the 
deductions of an enlightened being, bred in other 
regions than human^ and unfamiliar with the 
social status of man, but whose conclusions were 
formed after having subjected a specimen from 
each of the different races and castes of human 
beings to an inspection of their physique, sensa- 
tions and other inborn attributes and discovered 
the likeness between them — discovered that we 
are born into this world with the same powers 
of growth and development, and are possessed 
of the same number of mental and ph3^sical en- 
dowments, have equally an aversion to pain and 
discomfort, and are equally possessed with desires 
and capacities to enjoy. There is nothing in the 
construction and constitution of man to show 
why one should be given the lead to the other 
in the race of life, or why one should be obliged 
to contribute gratuitously to the equally able. 
And if distinction in these respects cannot be 
based upon the constitution of man, it fails for 
want of grounds. It is, then, no wrong in any 
man to aspire to elevate himself.- What wrong 
there is, is in the wrong use of means. 



68 UXFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

Again, it may be asked by another set, the 
more unsanguine and uncoiirageous, "Does not 
man's erroneousness debar him ot hope for any 
genuine and non-chemerical betterment of his 
condition ?" 

It does not. He is not so thoroughly error- 
going as to preclude all chance for improvement. 
While errorneous, he is also a being of develop- 
ment or progress. For though he has not been 
capacitated sufficiently to enable him to obviate 
all error he still has been endowed sufficiently to 
enable him to detect and discard errors and to 
discover and adopt correctives, as time proceeds, 
and thus to raise himself, step by step, to higher 
planes of perfection. It is nature's plan. She 
has chosen that we be enquiring students instead 
of finished scholars. She has decreed that we 
be progressive, that is, have power to advance 
but only through a list of mistakes. In progres- 
siveness there is inherent these two ideas; ad- 
vancement and erroneousness. It is not all ad- 
vancement or there would be no check; it is not 
all error or there would be no advance. It is a 
commixture of the two, making his journey to 
be an onward one, but a tantalizing one over the 
path of error. The attribute of advance for- 
wards him, the attribute of erroneousness per- 
verts him. The one holds out to him the posi- 
bility of perfection, the other incapacitates him 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 69 

from striking boldly out and establishing himself 
upon the plane of perfection ^at once. Having 
power, he advances; yet lacking full power, he 
must advance step by step and encounter diffi- 
culties, disappointments, and delays on the way- 
No, man is not debarred of hope. 

That man is to advance, and not remain sta- 
tionary like the lower animals of instinct, is a be- 
lief thoroughly established in our minds by our 
knowledge and experiences of the past. But if 
we were not satisfied from this source, the fact 
of man's being a creature of advancement is con- 
clusively proven by the nature of his directing 
talent — his reason. That man might not remain 
fixed to a one imperfect condition, but advance 
toward perfection, he is gifted with reason. But 
it is reason merely^ for if he had perfect know- 
ledge, he would not advance through trials and 
error, he would stride up to perfection at once. 
When it is answered why he was made a pro- 
gressive being instead of a perfect being, it will 
be understood why he was given reason instead 
of perfect knowledge. As it is we must be sat- 
isfied with knowing that he is provided with rea- 
son that he may weigh, may consider, ma}^ make 
use of his knowledge of the past to guide him as 
to his actions in the future and so gain step by 
step. Experience is the ground work from 
which he reasons. When from experience he 



JO UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

has discovered that certain policies and actions 
of his are lacking in excellence, calculated to 
work him harm instead of good, thought is 
brought to bear, probably first by the least un- 
selfish and most tortured, to discern or devise 
methods for dissipation of objectionable features 
and for substitution of improved conditions. In 
this work men proceed as best they know. As 
they do not know perfectly they frequently err, 
so they advance gradually, and they do not al- 
ways avoid error, so we see them frequently 
making selection of unjustifiable devices. 

What is our remedy, considered from the 
standpoint of man's erroneousness.^ 

Study, thought, education, dissemination, for 
purpose of discovery and dismissal of attempts 
that in their nature are purely futile, and for pur- 
pose of discovery and adoption of improved means 
for the welfare of man. In these are embraced 
about the scope of effort for the cure of the 
faults which lie at the door of erroneousness. 

PREPONDERANT STRENGTH OF SELF- 
INTEREST. 

The occasioning cause of man's resort to en- 
croachment upon his fellow for self - gain, or 
rather failure to forbear encroachment, seeing 
that his fellow is a being like unto himself, lies is 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 7 1 

the preponderance of love or regard for self over 
the love or regard for what is extraneous of self. 
We have before stated that the inclinational 
principle of man, known as the principle of self- 
preservation, self-interest, and under kindred 
terms, was an over-mastering principle of man's 
nature. That under a certain phase, there indi. 
cated, it moved him steadily and sternly toward 
the procurement of most for him, at least ex- 
pense to him. Here is the same principle mani- 
fested under another phase — It is love for self 
stronger than the love for any outward thing or 
person. We except in this statement the mem- 
bers of one's own family as being connected by 
ties too vital to the welfare and happiness of self 
to be considered outward. They are embraced 
within the sphere of self-love and are to be con- 
strued as included in the use of the term self. 
So construing, we are informed by our expe- 
rience and self-conciousness that the regard or 
interest of self is preponderant in one — that 
when the balance is weighted with the two re- 
gards, one for self and one for some person or 
thingelse;orwiththetwointerests,self-interestand 
another's interest, self wins. The preponderance 
of regard in favor of one's self is the circum. 
stance, I conceive, which accounts for man's 
motive to exact off his fellow. 

We are not to suppose that man takes an ardent 



72 . UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

and unmixed delight in causing the distress of 
his brother, in form and custom, by encroach- 
ment upon him, for man is imbued with commis- 
eration and pangs of remorse at his injury of his 
fellow, especially before his heart has become 
hardened and feelingless by long practice at such 
task. We are to suppose that when ill provis- 
ions of society invite the evil he does not forego 
the temptation to encroach, but embarks in the 
evil, because, while he may like to avoid distress 
of his fellow he likes still more to satisfy himself. 
His superior love of self dominates his inferior 
love for his fellow, and decides him in regard to all 
of his acts. Over-balancing self-interest, not 
entire absence of regard for others, occasions 
him to encroach, or profit at the expense of his 
fellow. 

NATURE OF REMEDIES CONSIDERED. 

What is the remedy for the evil of encroach- 
ment ? 

Some will say, "educate self-interest into the 
background." Many persons believe that if self- 
interest could be made secondary in strength, or 
could be got to be dominated over by sympathy, 
charity, or something that gave to man a 
superiority of regard for others, then the state of 
millennial happiness would be upon us. But 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 73 

those that hold this view, I respectfully sub- 
mit, labor under error. 

For what would be the consequence to the 
human race if man's nature was suddenly trans- 
formed, for instance, so that his self-interest was 
clear into the background and his love and solici- 
tude for all persons and things save himself were 
superior to that of the same for himself. There 
would be the extinction of the human race. Be- 
cause, if man cared less for himself than he did 
for all objects foreign to himself, he would not 
so much as perpetuate himself. If he loved to 
have all other things preserved as they existed 
rather than himself preserved as he existed, he 
would suffer himself to die of want before he 
would consume them. As he would not perform 
the important part of perpetuating himself, much 
less would he be likely to look after his welfare 
and progress without superiority of self-interest. 

Then we may suppose his self-interest to have 
been made inferior only to his regard for his fel- 
low man, being left to hold the accustomed sway 
over regard for the lower order of things. He 
would still be no better off. For if his regard 
for his fellow man was his greatest regard, he 
would spend his time, each proferring his aid to 
others, only to find all others in the same busi- 
ness with himself, and all to the neglect of home- 
While this was going on, each mutually insisting 



74 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

that the other should accept his aid, and none did 
accept because his disposition would not allow of 
it, and none did do for himself because his disposi- 
tion would not allow of it while another lived to 
do for, the world w^ould grow up in weeds and 
tares, and no earnings would there be brought 
forth to prevent man from perishing off the face 
of the earth. Even if man^s love for others was 
equal to his love for self, it still would avail him 
nothing worthy, for his powers of operation 
would be paratyzed by inability to dhoose whom 
to serve, himself or another. Prospects such as 
these confront us when we think of placing self- 
interest in the background, supposing it could be 
done, as it cannot, and proves the desirability of 
the superiority of regard for self. 

Superiority of self-esteem in man Is for a wise 
purpose. Possessed of a self- interest that over- 
balances in its influence the other principles of 
his nature there is precluded possibility of the 
intervention of affectionate principles to prevent 
him from going the length of the destruction of 
the lower order of things when he needs them 
to apply for his benefit, and there is precluded 
all chance of cavil between individuals, with its 
barren results, as to where to dispense aid, for 
as man is now constituted he has no trouble 
and loses no time In making up his mind. Each 
individual finds In himself a person quite willing 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 



75 



and ready at all times to be the immediate and 
steady beneficiary of all his own efforts. This 
would appear to be one important and vital 
function of preponderating self-interest. To 
prevent man's being delayed in his operations 
or held back entirely, to the detriment and des- 
truction of himself, by considerations of regard 
for outward things, or from having his power to 
work paralized by inability to decide whom to 
work for. Among a million of his fellow men, 
whatever may be his regard for any or all of 
them he experiences no trouble, as at present 
constituted, in making a choice. Filled with a 
superior self-regard, he readily concludes that 
he is the fittest subject of all to be recipient of 
the benefits he can confer, and amidst all things 
in nature, however much he may desire that 
any or all of them may be perpetuated, he de- 
sires still more the perpetuation and happiness 
of himself and therefore readily decides that 
they must yield to his convenience. 

It is the plan that the Creator has adopted 
for getting man to accomplish what he was born 
to accomplish. He moves man to the accom- 
plishment of his purpose through getting each 
one to attend primarily to the welfare of himself, 
considering that the independent welfare of 
each will constitute the collective welfare of the 
whole. And that each may attend rigorously 



76 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

to his own welfare, and not have his powers de- 
biHtated by doubt as to whom he should prefer, 
he has created man so that there is no one he 
likes so well, and therefore is so willing to serve, 
as himself. 

We see then that the making of self-interest 
preponderant in man, is a provision for the 
safety of him, indispensable, though it does lead 
him into making gain from off his fellow. . 

NOT DESIGNED TO ENCROACH. 

I may be pardoned here for digressingamo- 
ment to remark upon an unfortunate idea that 
may have caused itself about this time to be 
lurking in some reader's minds. The idea re- 
ferred to Is the supposition that the circumstance 
which tends man to encroach, affords ground 
for the conclusion that it is part of the Creator's 
design that man should follow the act of pro- 
fiting at the expense of his fellows. Such a con- 
clusion would carry with it the other that the 
business was permanendy irrevocable, and that 
schemes to suppress the evil were the sanguin- 
ary fruits of visionary minds. I cannot con- 
cede anything like this. I must claim that we 
cannot derive this conclusion from that circum- 
stance, because the circumstance of itself 
does not offer enough for the substantiation 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 77 

of such a conclusion, and there fails to ap- 
pear support for such conclusions from any 
other source. Considering it established that 
the ascendency of self-interest is indispensable 
to the welfare of man, the tendency to encroach 
(the tendency not the practice) is to be looked 
upon as an inextirpatable accompaniament of a 
necessary provision for the safety of man. 
Something that will be because the other must 
be. Viewed in the light that we are erroneous, 
the indisposition to forbear harm of ourselves' 
by encroaching is just so much proof that we 
are erroneous Remembering that we are pro- 
gressive beings, erroneous but advancing, the 
acts of encroachment arc to be looked upon as 
forces incidentally diverging into wrong direc- 
tions, owing to present want of kijowledge of 
how to direct and control them, but as forces 
which are susceptible of righting into usefulness* 
only we must wait until we have learned how. 
Our whole self-interest is analagous to many 
objects in nature, which furnish us useful powers 
but which have these same powers partially 
neutralized by others, which issue by the side 
of them, and are as yet beyond our control, but 
which are certainly susceptible of being turned 
into assisting and added powers as soon as we 
have learned the method of how. We will ben- 
efit to the full extent of man's propensity to 



78 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

serve himself as soon as we get him to divert 
what powers he expends against man away from 
man, and thence forward to expend all his efforts 
for self-gain against the forces of nature instead 
of but a part. 

To conclude the diversion, I will say we 
should fail in our endeavor if we attempted to 
supply reasons to show that it is a part of the 
design of his creation that man should prosper 
at the expense of his fellow, more than tempo- 
rarily, comparing eras with eternity. 

FINES AND PENALTIES. 

We see that it is folly to entertain the idea of 
educating self-interest into the background. I 
want now to offer a criticism against that method 
of preventing encroachment which consists in 
the use of restrictions, fines and penalties. It is 
by understanding what are the excellences and 
defects of remedies proposed, or in force for the 
protection of us, that we are to know what to 
contend for as useful and what to discard as use- 
less. The people, if they have not a clear idea 
of all the ways they are being imposed upon, do 
clearly recognize that they are impiously im- 
posed upon by parties who have fortified them- 
selves in a way to be able to outrageously over- 
charge and under -pay in their dealings with 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION, 79 

others, and thus to swindle the people through 
the medium of unfair prices. These parties are 
the managers of the combined or monoplied rail- 
road, manufacturing, mining and other important 
industries of the nation. The people at large are 
most anxious to sustain to these monopolies some 
other relationship than that of victims to their 
extortion, and the plan popular with them as the 
plan proper for securing right change of rela. 
tionship is the one of deterring the monopolies 
by means of penal codes into observing pre- 
scribed bounds in their setting of prices and accom- 
modations before the public. The people would, 
by means of fines and penalties for infractions of 
rules laid down for the regulation of extortioning 
individuals and corporations, scare the latter into 
ceasing their exactions and into dealing with the 
public upon such terms as the public should 
demand. This is the plan popularly held in view 
by those who, in these times, advocate the legis- 
lative control or government regulation of mon- 
opolies. 

The plan is to be condemned absolutely be- 
cause it is an unjustifiable device. It is to be 
condemned by those who would use it at all 
events, disregarding its unjustifiableness, because 
it is a thoroughly unavailing measure. 

The plan is an unjustifiable device, because the 
real motive behind the plan — the motive that 



8o UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION 

would necessarily rule in the event of success — is 
not one for prevention of extortion, but one for a 
turning of the tables upon the monopolists, and 
the bringing about a change of places with them. 
Some may at first thought be inclined to deny this 
and to say that the people would be willing to 
stop at some midway and reasonable limit in their 
demands upon the monopolists, but those who 
talk that way do so because they have not stopped 
to think what kind of a disposition a human being 
has within him. If we could make the mono- 
polists accede to our demands, would we stop in 
our requirements short of forcing them to become 
the merest earners of common subsistence ? 
Would we try to profit any less at their expense 
than they do now try to profit at our expense? 
No calm individual would say we would. Our 
knowledge of our self-interest interposes a bar to 
any such conclusion. 

Well, the object need to be sought is not the 
shifting from one hand to another of the privilege 
to extort. What is to be sought is the banishment 
of the practice entire from society, as an evil 
monstrous in itself and monstrous in the conse- 
quences it entails. As the plan under discussion 
is a plan adapted, so far as it is adapted to do 
anything, to subserve the former purpose only 
that should condemn it as an entirely unfit plan 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 8l 

in the minds of all those who have at heart the 
welfare of the people in whole. 

But to speak to those who would make use of 
this plan to escape the ravages of the monopolists, 
let any additional motives be what they may. 
The plan is a thoroughly unavailing one, is of no 
worth as a measure of enforcement because it 
cannot be enforced. 

Why there should be resistance at all to our 
endeavors is obvious. In the endeavor to enforce 
such a plan as this we are attempting to make 
man forbear reaping the largest profit his oppor- 
tunities will allow; directly antagonizing that 
strongest principle of his nature which instigates 
him into seeking the greatest profit; setting self- 
interest squarely against self-interest. Resistance 
and conflict follow by the influence of a law as 
immutable as the law of gravitation. The mon- 
opolist would not be prohibited from making all 
he can make, we would not be prohibited from 
restraining him within such bounds as we thought 
to be proper ones. The conflict remains a con- 
flict, with its attendant loss, expense, ill-feeling 
and mischief, until there is complete victory for 
one of the parties. That is the only way in 
which it can end. There can be no compromis- 
ing or midway standard established up to which 
parties can be got to go without attempting to go 



82 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

further. The self-interest of man will not permit 
of that. 

Invariably the contest goes against us. That 
is cold history. Whoever heard of a law fixing 
the rate of interest, the conduct of railroads, the 
amount to be paid for wages, the prices to be set 
upon monopoly made wares, or for controlling 
monopolists in any way that held for any length 
of time or did any appreciable good.^ 

Why we always fail will be plainly understood 
when we see that the advantages are all against 
us. We account for the presence of the monopo- 
lists in the first place, by those misprovisions of 
ours which promote their growth instead of dis- 
promote the same. Growth takes place under a 
fostering care and it is onl}^ after they have at- 
tained the power to make themselves excessive- 
ly offensive that restrictive measures begin to be 
projected against them. Then their power stands 
them just so much ahead in their contests with 
the people. They have the monopoly, which in 
itself is an immense lever of advantage. They 
have besides, the wealth which the monopoly has 
brought them; the prestige which wealth brings 
them, the passion for extorting which the busi- 
ness of extorting generates, and the qualifications 
in the art of forefending, puerilizing and defying 
restrictive measures, which a special study of the 
art has given them. These combined advantages 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 83 

fit them to oppose such formidable obstacles 
from beginning to end, to all efforts of the people 
to legislate them into obedience to demands as to 
render them upon the whole invincible. Upon dis- 
cussion in the field, their large profits enable them 
to employ the best talent to manufacture opinion 
in their favor. At the polls there is the influence 
of prestige, money and menace of employes 
and dependents. In the legislative halls, means, 
influence and sophistry prepared to order, are not 
lacking for the purchase, cajolement and decep- 
tion of those elected pledged to the peoples' in- 
terests. In the courts, there are judges and juries 
to mystify and bribe. As a last resource the 
people can be defied, for see how well their mo- 
nopoly stands them in hand. By means of it 
they can tax up all costs of contest, both the 
peoples' cost and their own, to the people. This 
is their grand advantage. They can exhaust the 
peoples' treasury while they leave their own un- 
impaired. As it requires monied means, as well 
as pluck and energy to carry on the contest, this 
advantage they have alone, not counting others, 
renders it only a question of time when the peo- 
ple must give up disabled every time they under- 
take restrictive measures against the monopo- 
lists. 

About the only objection the monopolists can 
have to these contests is that it forces them to ex- 



84 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

pend a portion of their gains as fees to counsel and 
for corruption purposes, when they might other- 
wise pocket the whole of their gains as clear 
profit. On account of the utter unfitness of the 
contests to minister to any sort of advantage to 
the people, either right or wrong, they should be 
abandoned by the latter. To get restrictive codes 
passed into law requires neglect of regular affairs, 
war of feeling, and expense. When the codes 
are enacted, of what worth are they.^ They are 
laws of the land some will assert with an air of 
confidence calculated to amuse people who have 
watched the effect of a great many of our laws. 
They are a part of the law of the land when made 
so, it is true, and an aggrieved individual can 
have recourse to them for redress whenever he 
thinks it is to his interest to pit himself, and what 
he can command, against a power that makes of 
the art of worrying prosecutions and parrying the 
effects of laws a special craft, and that can hire 
and bribe without stint, by virtue of having it in 
hand to make the people foot the bills. But ag- 
grieved parties do not find to their interest to 
have such recourse. What little experience some 
have had in the business is of a sort to discourage 
most people from undertaking more of it. The 
laws in consequence virtuall}^ become a dead let- 
ter as soon as they are passed. 

In conclusion, on this point I will say, that the 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 85 

attempt to legislate monoplies into control by 
means of restrictions and penalties should be 
abandoned because such work is only an idling 
away of the people's time at the people's expense. 
A better, because the genuine, reason for the 
abandonment of the plan is, that it is not a plan 
fitted for the extirpation of the practice of extor 
tion, since if it could be successfully enforced it 
would only result in transferring the business of 
extorting from one set of hands to another set of 
hands. 

THE PROPER WAY. 

What are we to do then for the betterment of 
our situation, considering the circumstances so 
far brought up as factors to be taken into account ? 
Recognize that there is in man a self-interest, and 
that this self-interest disposes him steadily and 
sternly into seeking to realize the greatest profit 
for himself. Recognize that the making of us 
thus to wish to profit, is a wise operation, design- 
ed for the safety and welfare of us. Recognize 
that self-interest is an over-mastering principle 
and sways man in the pursuit of his purpose. 
We will then be prepared to further recognize 
that it is neither desirable to dissuade men from 
attempting to gain the greatest profit, or possi- 
ble to prevent them from getting the greatest 



86 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION, 

profit their opportunities will afford their getting. 

When we have brought all these sources of 
view to bear upon our judgments, I think we 
must be convinced that the proper course to pur- 
sue is to fall in with the provisions of nature as 
we find them, and make our provisions to har- 
monize with them. That is, instead of trying to 
resist and contrarize man as actuated by his self- 
interest we should place our self in such an at- 
titude that we will be favorably affected by him 
as thus actuated. We will then be in a position 
to wish him all speed in his endeavors, and to 
give a hand to accelerate him in his progress, 
since the more a man would do for himself under 
such provision the more would he be benefiting 
society. 

The specific provision needed to bring us into 
proper and favorable relations with men, as insti- 
gated by their self-interest, is a fair tax law. Did 
fair taxation prevail men would voluntarily refuse 
to combine industries into consolidated wholes, be- 
cause under such form the industries would yield 
less profit than they would if maintained in inde- 
pendent and separately working concerns. Void 
the consolidations, we would be rid of the ex. 
tortion which can only be possible where there 
are consolidations. We would have, by working 
in harmony with natural laws of cause and effect,' 
what we cannot gain in any other way. 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 87 

Self-interest is an over-influencing force in man 
that, like many other powers in nature, serves us 
good or ill according as it is met with proper or 
improper provisions. Good provisions invite 
good, false provisions invite monstrous harm. 

Fair taxation, as a measure of itself, would be 
a good in the place of the evil of unfair taxation. 
As a measure to cause effect, it would relieve us 
of the impositions of monopolists by disinclining 
people to make of themselves monopolists. It 
would lead to industrial freedom, because that is 
the state that would prevail in the absence of 
monopoly. Under industrial freedom man would 
from the very condition of things, operate solely 
against nature and in such manner as to promote 
the solid welfare of the race. 



CHAPTER III. 



DIVISION OF LABOR. 



A justifiable device of man for the profit of 
himself is the division of labor. The farmer has 
his occupation, the merchant his, the manu- 
facturer his, the professor his, the cobbler his, the 
day worker his and so on through a long list. The 
advantages of division of labor are so apparent 
and commonly vi^ell understood, as to render it un- 
necessary to take up time with remarks upon this 
special phase of the subject. All know to what 
a deplorable condition we would be reduced were 
each individual of society forced to produce 
within himself, and with his own hands, everything 
he used for the satisfaction of himself. 

Division of labor is the root or cause of several 
of the incidents and affairs which prevail in 
society. First among these is the necessity to 
exchange products. As under the system of di- 
vision of labor individuals confine themselves to 
special lines of effort, each one produces an excess 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 89 

of his own kind and has lacks of the kind others 
produce. To get desires evenly ministered to, 
then, the business of exchange is brought into re- 
quisition, to make excesses in one place go to fill 
up lacks in another. 

Out of this requirement to exchange grows the 
opportunity to cheat, as practiced through over- 
charging for what is parted with and under-paying 
for what is purchased. Monopoly is the main in- 
strumentality used to enforce compliance with the 
desire to over-charge and under-pay. 

POWERLESSNESS TO DISCOVER VALUES 
OF EARNINGS. 

A circumstance incident to the division of labor, 
or probably more properly to this and exchange 
combined, is powerlessness to calculate what are 
shares or separate amounts of earnings. This 
fact is worthy to be borne in mind as being one 
of sufficient importance to exercise a deciding in- 
fluence in certain matters of social regulation. 
We are without knowledge of, and without op- 
portunity to find out, what are distinctive values 
or amounts, as educed by different units of labor 
and capital, (Juring specific periods of engagement. 
We cannot tell what is a man's real earnings as 
brought forth by the vocation in which he is en- 
gaged. We cannot tell what are the earnings of 



90 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

capital, land, or money, as evoked by each by 
itself, and when men attempt to decide what 
portion of earnings in general belong to profit, 
what to rent, what to interest, what to wages 
and elsewhere, they place themselves upon a par 
with the weather predictors and fortune tellers, 
for they can do no more than guess from the un- 
known to the unknown. 

The reason we cannot determine what are in- 
dependent amounts of earnings, is that the 
agencies or forces concerned in earning do not 
afford us data for artificial calculations upon the 
subject, and present provisions do not discover 
them to us in any other way. The pay a man 
receives for what he parts with affords no criterion 
b}^ which to judge of the real worth of the thing 
parted with, for how could the pay be a guide 
under a system of exchange in which values are 
distorted all out of shape by the rulings of extor- 
tionate men in power ? Values are far out of 
their proper proportions. That we can be sure 
of because we are aware that immense instru- 
mentalities of extortion prevail for the making 
of them so. But what their -proper proportions 
are must remain, under present conditions, a 
quandary to us, because no recourse to some 
fundamental information to begin with can be 
had, as a basis for figures and calculation. 

This much information our reasoning faculty 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 9 1 

lets US into : the total of earnings in the com- 
munity for a given period is the aggregated earn- 
ings of the individuals of the community for the 
given period; and, as a deduction, the earnings of 
each individual is the share he has contributed 
to the aggregated or total of earnings for the pe- 
riod. But while this information may lead us 
to a better understanding of the relationship 
between man and his earnings, and, be therefore, 
of service in its special field, it throws, no light 
upon the value of an earning as an isolated fact. 
What is the definite or absolute value any one 
has contributed to the collection or sum of values 
at any given time, through the injection of his 
labor, his skill or his capital into productive en- 
terprises, or through industry at merchandising, at 
medicine, at pulpit, at science, at bar, or at other 
vocations, is beyond the power of man to decide 
by any mode under existing -provisions. 

Now, if under existing provisions or laws of 
society earned amounts^ as embraced in wages, 
interest, rent, profits or other rewards cannot, as 
separate entities, be made known to us, have we 
not in this fact another invincible argument against 
the theory of legislative regulation of prices? I 
make this point here again because I know that a 
prevalent opinion among men is that combinations 
must be curbed by the fixing of prices for their 
observance in their dealings with the public, and 



92 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

because I would have persons see the futiHty of 
such a course and abandon it on account of its 
futility. I have before shown some of the ob- 
jections to this popular plan of government 
control, and powerlessness to discover shares of 
earnings,! urge as another cogent objection to it. 
For if we cannot discern what proper prices 
are is it not true that, though we could get the 
extortionists to accede to our demands, and 
though our motives were perfect, we would 
err so grievously as not to make any material 
improvement upon present conditions ? Would we 
not lack so much that was proper to be ob- 
served in our attempts to exercise a fair and im- 
partial discrimination in the setting of prices as to 
cause us to avert but little of the dangers of un- 
fair distribution? My judgment tells me that 
were all difficulties cleared from the field but only 
this one of powerlessness to fore-calculate values 
of earnings, it alone would make all attempts 
to regulate prices end in egregious failure. 

In view of the difficulties here presented, then, 
what is the remed}^ for extortionate dealing.^ 
As recommended in view of the difficulties pre- 
viously examined, the answer must be as before, 
fair taxation. Fair taxation would generate a 
state of industrial liberty and thereby open the 
door for the exercise of supreme competitive 
processes whose functions it were to dis- 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION, 93 

tribute values to the sources of their 
origin and to do this without recourse to fore- 
calculation. As this would be affecting the hon' 
est object of fore-known values, it would be af- 
fecting a satisfactory solution of all that was in- 
volved in the attempt to fore-calculate values by 
recourse to a different and practicable plan. 
The specific forms of competitive processes will 
be made the subject of future explanation. 

We say that under present provisions man 
could not by any mode discover the values of in- 
dividual earnings. How can he under provisions 
of industrial liberty.^ By observing the harvest 
of man's effort, or expenditure of means. By 
seeing what wages, interest, profits and so on, were 
after they had become fixed as compensations or 
rates of compensation by man operating in obed- 
ience to a principle whose function it is to dis" 
tribute rewards to the sources of their author- 
ship. That is the only way they can be made 
known to us. When we have instituted a law 
or regulation that will impel to identity of reward 
with earnings, then we can learn what earned 
values are by observing what persons receive as 
rewards for their energy and capital. ' Obvious- 
ly the system which will discover to us the earn- 
ings of each person by giving to each a compen- 
sation equal to his earnings is the proper system 
to establish for the government of society, if we 



94 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

believe that people should be rewarded according 
to their earnings. 

MONEY. 

Another circumstance founded upon division of 
labor is the need of money. As division of labor 
makes necessary the business of exchange, so 
there must be a symbolic medium of exchange, a 
something that people agree shall stand in the 
place of earnings and register them, and be a sign 
that the bearer has parted with so much actual 
value to society somewhere, and is entitled to so 
much value from society elsewhere. The amount 
of money needed by a people should, like rates 
of wages, profits and so on, be left to the working 
of natural laws. No set of law makers or other 
men can tell us how much currency we should 
have. It should be left to the decision of natural 
laws, under a provision which brought natural 
law into the ascendency. Reference will be 
again made to this subject. 

VS^ORTHS OR VALUES. 

Worths or values may be divided into natural, 
artificial and earned. Natural worths are such 
as are caused to be displa3'ed by man subjected 
to the free operation of natural laws. What na- 
tural worths are we have no certainty that we 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 95 

have any knowledge of, because the operation of 
natural laws has always been thwarted by 
exactors. 

Artificial worths are such as are made in the 
interests of exactors. Under a system of unfair 
distribution, or reward out of harmony with earn- 
ings, it is not known whether any compensations 
are ever rated at their real values, while a certainty 
exists, that man}^ of them are rated widely, and 
some very widely, of their real values. 

Earned worths are the values attaching to ser- 
vices or articles by virtue of the amount and 
quality of energy undergone or expenditure 
made. Under the influences engendered by a 
state of industrial liberty, natural worths and 
earned worths would nearly coincide, that is, the 
valuation, buying and selling of things would be 
at their natural worths and very nearly always at 
their earned worths. This is because discrepancy 
between natural worth and earned worth would 
only occur where people had miscalculated as to 
suppl}^ and demand, or w^here freaks of nature 
interfered with people's calculations. Man's 
powers of foresight is sufficiently ^cute, and the 
responses of nature are sufficiently uniform 
however to prevent a wide breach being made 
between supply and demand where there is 
freedom of operation. 



g6 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

CAPITAL. 

Another justifiable device of man for accele- 
rating his welfare is the diversion of a portion of 
his productive efforts toward supplying himself 
with means of help at earning. Thus man does 
not occupy his whole time in producing for his 
immediate personal wants: he occupies a portion 
of his time in supplying himseif with tools, ma- 
chinery, and all sorts of appliances that can be of 
help to him in ministering to his personal wants. 
These helping appliances are what are called his 
capital. They do not minister directly to the 
satisfaction of his personal wants, as food and 
clothes which can be eaten and worn ; they minister 
indirectly by being the work animals, tools and 
machinery that aid in the procurement of food 
and clothes and other things which satisfy his 
immediate wants. The special value of capital 
consists in its power to enable man to produce 
faster and better, and with less hardship to him- 
self than he could do without it as an instrument 
of help. Capital is a want of man as much as 
direct subsistence like food, and clothes and 
shelter. If we call man's direct personal wants 
his immediate wants, capital can be appropriately 
called his mediate wants. 

Man's power to earn or produce is greater 
than his power to utilize or use up, if both pro- 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 97 

cesses are addressed to a single or a stationary 
class of articles. Thus, place a set of men and 
their families out by themselves and order them 
to produce of corn, meat, and one style of cloth- 
ing and shelter, and they will under ordinary 
circumstances, and with an ordinary amount of 
means and effort, produce more than they can 
eat and wear and hide themselves under. This 
comes from nature's responding with a greater 
force than that with which she is struck — from 
her repaying whatever expenditure is made up- 
on her nvith interest. It is the over-respondlng- 
ness of nature that gives birth to capital. If 
nature were not thus over-responsive or gain- 
giving, there xould never be any capital or in- 
crease of capital, and therefore no progress in 
the human race. If savages had never had 
time to spare, outside of what was needed to 
feed and clothe them In the simplest manner, 
to invent and construct tools and implements, 
we would be savages still. Capital is savings, 
what can be spared as a helper to production 
after present wants are satisfied. 

The over-respondingness of nature, com- 
bined with man's power to devise against na- 
ture, conspire to make man as a producing 
agent, vastly more than equal to the task of 
providing for his stringent necessities. This 
is proven by the fact that the enforced periods 



98 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

of Idleness, so regularly precipitated among so 
many, the unlucrativeness of capital diverted 
into improper channels everywhere, and the 
disadvantages that we labor under from wrong 
government generally, while furnishing, as they 
do, reliefs and clogs and stays to accumxulation, 
not only do not deprive us of a living, but leave 
us to be periodically overwhelmed with all sorts 
of over-production. These facts give evidence 
that our capacity to produce necessities is vast- 
ly ahead of our need for necessities. 

AMPLIFICATION OF WANTS. 

But the statement is not made that man cannot 
consume as fast as he can earn, itjs that he can- 
not consume the total of one line of common 
support, like that of necessaries, if all his ener- 
gies are confined to procuring in one line of 
common support. Man has it in his power to 
amplify his wants, to enlarge his capacity for 
receiving satisfactions, and to invent new ways 
of being gratified when he finds that his means 
are in excess of those needed for accustomed 
wants. This power to amplify affords a perma- 
nent outlet to the fullest development of his 
power to earn. It enables him, when free to 
act out the designs of nature, to expand his 
wants, both mediate and immediate, Avith a de 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 99 

gree of celerity that will prevent them from ever 
being overtaken by the expansion of his earn- 
ingpowers. 

The amplification of the wants of man may 
be divided into that of his immediate, or bodily 
wants, and that of his mediate or capital wants. 
The amplication of the bodily wants answers to 
the development of the desires or needs of the 
person. It consists in the refinement of exist- 
ing ways of receiving satisfaction and the add- 
ing on of new ways of receiving satisfaction. 
Thus man, when he finds that he can earn more 
of coarse or rude clothes, food and shelter than 
he needs has not to idle away time on that ac- 
count. Finer clothes, more delicate and varied 
foods, more comfortable shelter will add to his 
enjoyments and length of life, and of these it re- 
quires more labor to procure 1:han it does for 
things coarse and rude. Then, man loves to 
please the ear with music, the sight with paint- 
ings, the taste with adornments. He loves to 
afford himself books and newspapers, to appear 
respectable at church, and to exchange hospital- 
ities with his neighbors in becoming style He 
loves to be so fixed with abodes that he can 
properly protect himself and everything about 
him from the inclemencies of the v/eather. He 
desires to be relieved from over-toil, and to be 
able to spend a proper proportion of his time in 



lOO UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

recreation and leisure. He wants to be able 
to assist in providing such sanitary regulations 
as are an effectual safeguard against ill-health. 
He loves to educate his children ; he loves to 
travel and to see. He wants, in short, the 
country to be rich, and every home a rich man's 
home. Well, all these make such an enormous 
draft upon his earning power, to say nothing of 
unapparent wants, or such as may be expected 
to arise when existing ones are satisfied, that, 
so far we can see, he may invent and devise to 
the end of the world, and yet never be nausea- 
ted with surplus or compelled to be unwillingly 
idle. 

The amplification of mediate or capital wants, 
for such there must be also, answers to the de- 
velopment of means and machinery for the con- 
struction, preparation and protection of things 
answering to the refined and added agencies or 
wants of the person. For the manufacture of 
finer clothes, improved machinery is needed. For 
the production and preparation of finer foods, 
and In greater variety, Improved tillage as well as 
Improved machinery and facilities are needed. 
Indeed expansion of personal wants can only be 
had as there is kept up a corresponding expansion 
of capital to be used as an instrumentality In 
ministering to the former. If we would enjoy the 
comforts and advantages of good transportation, 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. lOI 

we must have good means of transportation, 
such as good roads, good bridges, good con- 
veyances. If we would have the enjo3^ments, and 
comforts, and protection of good shelter we must 
have good sheltering structures, as good barns, 
sheds, warerooms, storehouses and other conser- 
vatories. If we would have superior goods we 
must have superior factories and tools for the 
manufacture of them. If we would have all our 
wants supplied it is essential that we have ma- 
chinery that wijl work rapidly, as well as del- 
icately ; that the soil be made to yield in abun- 
dance as well as in variety, that transportation be 
brisk as well as certain and safe, so that the least 
possible amount of time need be taken up with 
each particular want. We see then, that there is 
a scope for the increase of man's mediate means 
as well as for increase of his immediate means of 
satisfaction, which makes it additionally clear 
that there need be no overplus on account of the 
inability of a people to consume as fast as they 
can produce. ^ 

It is true that we have over-production and un- 
willing idleness of men on account thereof, but 
that comes from another cause than over-earnine 
power, a fact that is rendered sufficiently evident 
when we remember that the idleness is not joined 
with the enjoyment of superabundance, a con- 
nection that would certainly take place if there 



I02 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

was real and natural over-production. Over- 
production and idleness aside of indigence and 
starvation will never afford grounds for the build- 
ing up of a theory, except a most hollow one, 
that people are producing more than they want. 
Nature has so constructed man as to relieve him 
from necessity of ever being afflicted with com- 
pulsory idleness of self, or with sight of waste of 
the fruits of his industry, where the conditions of 
society are aright. 

BALANCE BETWEEN CAPITAL AND NEED 

OF IT, 

Where there is freedon of pursuit the extra 
product, the part resulting from man's over-earn- 
ing power, will not be devoted wholly to the 
increase of personal gratification or wholly to 
increase of capital. It will be divided propor- 
tionately. If all extra product from any time 
forward were applied to the immediate grat- 
ification of man, there could thenceforward be 
no increase of capital and ^therefore no more im- 
provements in the gratification of men. Such a 
mode of doing would not be practiced by men, 
however, since their dispositions impel them to 
continuously improve and develop themselves. 
If all extra products were applied to increase of 
capital alone there still could be no improvement 
in the condition and development of man, since 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. I03 

capital is not the means of gratif3'ing man's im- 
mediate wants, but the means of producing the 
means to gratify his immediate wants, when so 
used. Man wants advance, therefore is actuated 
into the proper use of nature's provisions, viz: pro- 
gressive earning power, to promote his advan- 
cement. This proper use consists in dividing the 
extra product into two such proportionate parts 
between mediate and immediate means of satis- 
faction, as to cause there to be neither lack nor 
surplus in either place, but perfect balance. 

I assume of course, that there is no distinction 
in the innate rights of individuals, and that in that 
expansion of sources of satisfaction which will 
serve to absorb ail the products of effort, one in- 
dividual should not be made to give way to 
another. If you affirm and enforce the principle, 
however, that the masses of industrious are well 
enough provided for when they are sheltered in 
the most must-needs-be manner, clad in the merest 
sufficiency and have their throats made the road 
way of the commonest diet; if after these barest 
sufficiencies have been produced you disallow 
them the right to divert their efforts to the bet- 
terment of their conditions by improving the 
quality of their homes, their clothing, their food 
and all that relates to themselves ; if none are 
entitled to any betterments, except a self-con- 
stituted upper class ; and if after the latter's de- 



I04 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

mands for betterments are satiated the balance of 
the efforts of the common herd are to be confined 
to the production of such things as are adjudged 
to be the only fit things for them to have, then 
the people cannot consume as much as they can 
produce. Because, as has been shown, man is 
vastly superior to the task of providing for his 
commonest necessities. So productive is man's 
effort that a portion of the people, far less than the 
whole number, or the time of all far less than full 
time, devoted to the purpose^ is sufficient to 
provide a full supply of the necessities of life. 
Then as has been said, if the necessities of life are 
all that the masses are to have and produce for 
themselves, there will be an over-supply of ne- 
cessities. If on the contrary, it is believed that 
no man has rights over another, and a law is en- 
forced which gives to each his deserts, there will 
be no surplus of necessities. Because the spare 
efforts of men will be directed to the betterment 
of their conditions. They will make provision, 
first, for better homes and better living, then for 
improvement of their intellects and the grat- 
ification of higher wants. The labor and capital 
directed to these purposes, will be withdrawn 
from the production of the commoner necessities 
and in proper proportion, the law of supply and 
demand regulating, gravitation like, the portion 
to be devoted to each department of effort. If 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 105 

misjudgment resulted in a surfeit in one direction 
there would be speedy adjustment to proper ratio 
by the tendency of production in an unfettered 
condition to balance. There could not be over- 
production in any direction that would be more 
than incidental, and amenable to quick cor- 
rection. 

Where the people were priviledged to expand 
their satisfactions as fair dealings would allow, 
they could never glut themselves with their ac- 
cumulations. Such a thing as the ability of a 
people to produce more than they want is an ab- 
surdity in reasoning. No people were ever 
satisfied that they had as much as they wanted, 
the trouble is that labor and capital have been so 
diverted astray as to allow on the part of the 
masses, neither the quenching of existing wants 
or the growth and satisfaction of new wants. 
With all the great hue and cry about over-pro- 
duction we do not find that the laborer is over- 
burdened with caring for the abundances of sup- 
port. While of the things he has helped to 
produce, like lumber, nails^ house-building ma- 
terials, house furnishing, clothing and food there 
is an over-production, of these same things he 
is sadly in need, and he would purchase freely of 
them, that he might have a home and a reason- 
able share of the comforts belonging to a home, 
did he receive the amount of wages which a fair 



Io6 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

distribution would allow. The farmer is not seized 
of a lack of wants. Were he not compelled to 
pay a bonus to the banker in extra interest charge, 
another to the railroad in extra transport charge, 
another to each of the several manufacturing 
combinations for extra charge upon lumber, 
nails, farm-tools, and many articles of food and 
clothing, he would, through his savings, become 
a much larger consumer of lumber, nails, farm- 
tools, clothing and of material to ke.ep up the 
fertility of his land, for he is much in need of 
them all. Other instances embracing the mer- 
cantile, manufacturing and other independently 
operating concerns need not be given to show 
that the mass of the people are in need, many 
of them in dire need, of the articles now in over- 
production, and that lack of consumption does 
not come from lack of need but from another 
cause. A little less to unfair protiters and a little 
more to the victims of unfair protiters, would go 
a long way toward relieving us of the evil of over- 
production. And a system of wealth division 
that allowed to each individual a reward that was 
even with his earnings, would prevent over-pro- 
duction entirely, b}^ permitting all to engage in 
the satisfaction of their higher-wants, when their 
commoner wants were quenched. 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. I07 



FALLACIOUS CAUSE FOR HARD TIMES. 

Here, I wish to call attention to an argument 
of common occurrence. We frequently hear it 
urged that over-production is the cause of ''hard 
times." The theory is advanced by those who 
hold, I presume, that we cannot develop our ca- 
pacities to consume as fast as we can develop 
our capacities to produce. Now, while it might 
be plainly understood that excess of earning over 
consuming power might be the cause of partial 
idleness of ourselves, does it not appear odd that 
the power to over-produce, should be in and of 
itself, as held, the cause of "hard times," such as 
lack, stringenc}^, and close living generally, with 
absolute destitution and want in many places. 
Because we have produced too much of the 
means of subsistence the masses are precipitated 
into a state of general deprivation and inability 
to get. Because there has been over-production 
it has become extremely difficult for the people 
in general to make both ends meet. Because 
we cannot devour at once all we are enable to 
create, a large portion of our population must be 
afflicted with a condition bordering on famine. 
That is the theory. But is it not queer doctrine? 
Does it not appear altogether more reasonable 
to believe that it were possible for us by our na- 



Io8 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

tural industry to create more than we could 
readily consume, that the natural reward would 
be a period of leisure and rest in the enjoyment 
of plenty? It does appear so to me indeed, and 
the latter would have to occur, I am certain, if 
the former did occur under the sovereignity of 
fair distribution. 

The advocates of the doctrine that over-pro- 
duction is the originating cause of hard times 
fail, I think, to take into account an important 
factor imbedded in the doctrine ot supply and 
demand. If one of them were asked what it 
was that caused demand, I think he would an- 
swer that it was need. He would say the peo- 
ple did not need the food, clothing, and many 
sorts of commodities that exist in superabun- 
dance, or they certainly would not let them go 
unconsumed. And I think if he were asked 
again why we have over-production, he would 
give as a sole cause excess of supply over need. 
The answer would not harmonize very well with 
the existence of actual need almost ever3'where, 
and of intense need in many places; still, I think 
it is the answer that would be given, as well as 
vigorously supported by the champions of the 
doctrine. 

Their error consists in ignoring means as a 
factor in creating demand. Both need and means 
are required to make demand effective. The one 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. I09 

enables you to use a thing, the other enables you 
to get the thing. When people have both need 
of certain articles and means to procure said 
articles, then does there exist the condition which 
makes an effective demand for those articles. 
Neither means or needs standing by themselves 
will do the work. Means alone will not create 
demand. The exactors have an extensive sur- 
plusage of means, but they can only wear so 
many clothes, and can only eat so much food, and 
can only spend so much for luxury and aggran- 
dizement. Fifty thousand of them might consume 
in extra-extravagances the gains they might 
make off of another fifty thousand people, and 
thus prevent over-production, but fifty thousand 
exactors cannot consume the surplusage they can 
exact off of fifty millions of people. 

Need alone will not create demand. The 
crying wants of an impoverished and enfamined 
populace will not of itself create a demand for 
wheat, because a people cannot get wheat without 
means. Both needs and means must enter into 
that condition which is the condition precedent of 
effective demand'. Those fail to see this, I think, 
who claim that the over-production is the excess 
of supply over need. 

Need represent the capacity of the people to 
consume. Means represent the power of the 
people to purchase. The few who have appro- 



no UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

priated an undue share of the people's earnings 
cannot themselves use them up, hence over-pro- 
duction. The many who are in need of the com- 
modities of over-production, cannot satisfy their 
needs for want of means of purchase, hence hard 
times. ^ Over-production does not occur from 
excess of supply over general need. Over-pro- 
duction is not the direct cause of hard times. 
Notice of the question in this relation is only 
called for, because the opposite of these denials 
are seriously mantained by persons of rational 
mind. 



i 



CHAPTER IV. 



COMPETITION. 



Another device, justifiable, resorted to by men 
for the greatest profit to themselves is the instal- 
lation of themselves into the better paying voca- 
tions. People are inclined, not only to select ex- 
pedients for making most profitable the particu- 
lar vocations in which they are engaged 5 but to 
make selection of those vocations which they 
can make most profitable to themselves upon the 
whole. The rivalry between men to identify 
themselves with the better paying vocations is 
what is called competition. Were competition 
entirely free and fair, in other words, did all 
men possess an equal amount of liberty and re- 
straint in their endeavors to identify themselves 
with those pursuits which they conceived they 
could make the most profitable to themselves, 
some most charming results would follow. What 
those results would be, as well as what would be 
the processes of their accomplishment, can best 



112 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

be learned by fixing definitely our antecedent 
conditions, and observing what would be the 
conduct and consummations of men under them, 

The people of present society we may divide 
into two classes: first, those who, by reason of 
possessing certain advantages reap continuously 
larger than the average rates of profit upon their 
undertakings; secondly, those who by reason of 
being taken the advantage of, do not reap larger 
than the average rates of profit, on the contrary 
may be reaping no profit or may be losing. The 
first class we call exactors, because they get their 
higher than average profits by exacting an unfair 
share from the collective earnings of the whole 
people; the other we call, in contra-distinction, 
the common people or masses, because it is the 
great body of people who are made the sufferers 
of exaction. 

Project into society a law, operative and effi- 
cacious, that gives to every individual absolute 
freedom to engage in any useful enterprise he 
sees fit to, at the same time that it prevents him' 
from keeping any one else from doing the same 
thing. Provide this law which does not permit 
individuals to effectively combine industries for 
sake of exclusive control, and which does not 
permit individuals to effectively prevent others 
from coming in and competing with them upon 
the grounds they would monopolize. Provide 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. II 3 

this law which makes individual or partnership , 
industrians prefer to act upon their own respon- 
sibilities and prefer to rely upon their own re- 
sources; and which causes them to expect no 
aid from others, and have no fears of interference 
from others beyond what competition alone oc- 
casions. Provide thus for complete self-depen- 
dence, self-reliance, non-artificial restraint, equal 
priviledgedness.To cover all, in short, provide, 
through the agency of fair taxation, for that in- 
dustrial freedom, which makes possible the exer- 
cise of free and fair competition. Then we will 
have free and fair competition, the workings and 
consummations engendered by which we may 
trace and define. 

Following fair taxation, an early event, among 
others, would be a shifting about of energy and 
capital which had for its effect the reduction of 
all industries to the same basis of profitableness. 
That is, there could not long continue a set of 
good paying pursuits juxtaposited to a set of 
poor paying pursuits, because migration would 
at once begin from the poorer paying into the 
better paying pursuits, and continue all in the 
same direction, or back and forth as the occasion 
required to rectify mistakes, until all pursuits 
were brought to a level of profitableness. This 
movement the people would be impelled into by 
that disposition of theirs, admitting of no ef- 



114 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

fective exceptions, which constantly urges them 
to go where the most can be gained. The 
movement would be permitted by that provision 
which dissolved all danger of undue interference 
from those who before would have forced to ruin 
and abandonment weak competitors by tem- 
porar}^ under-priced sales, bargains for railroad 
discrimination and such other means as are 
possible while combinations have sway. Prices 
that had been kept up by forced under-supply 
would be brought down to the average by the 
attraction of rival producers until the supply 
became normal. Prices that had been kept up 
by mere resolve of greed, would be brought down 
by the endeavors of ex-exactors to offer the same 
inducements as ^rivals if they would hold their 
trade. Prices that were unsatisfactorily low 
would be brought up to the average by desertions 
of those who had availed themselves of the op- 
portunity to engage in vocations that were better 
paying. 

What would be the intermediate movements 
of energy and capital for the establishment of 
average, we cannot predict with much degree of 
certainty, because we cannot now very well 
o-uess how much industries are distorted out of 
their natural relationships, or how much more the 
distortions are in one direction than in another. 
Were natural laws just now brought into the 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. II 5 

ascendency, it is quite probable that the turn 
affairs would take, would be the occasion of 
many surprises to society. What we can predict 
with safety in general is, that in the event of 
industrial freedom, migrations of men and capital 
would immediately start up, and continue into 
the better paying pursuits while they were better 
paying, out of them again when others became 
better paying, and that the migrations would cease 
when pursuits had all been brought to an equality 
in rate of profitableness, only to begin again for 
re-establishment of equilibrium when non-equil- 
ibrium had occurred. We can safely predict 
this, because common experience, and our know- 
ledge of ourselves teaches us, that one of the 
forcible and fixed functions of free competition is 
to reduce and mantain industries to and at a level 
of profitableness. 

REWARD WITH EARNINGS. 

If there is any system which will guarantee to 
every industrian the even reward of his earnings 
it is the system which throws each person upon 
his own responsibilities, makes him depend upon 
his own resources for his gains, disinclines him to 
combine with others for sake of unnatural elevation 
or lowering of prices in the combined interests, 
forbids him to or prevents him from forcing others 
to desist in their competition with him. Under 



Il6 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

such a system, as man cannot get, one from the 
other, he is bound to get from nature, — bound to 
get by adding to the collective values as opposed 
to transferring to his hands the already created 
values of others. The system which disallows 
any encroachment is b}^ the very nature of it the 
system which allows to each a reward equivalent 
to his earnings, and thereby discovers to each, as 
has been before explained, what is his share of 
earnings. 

The rates of reward which free competition 
would disburse, are not, as some might suppose, 
exact sameness of pecuniary return upon the unit 
for all similar^ applied earnings or for all capital 
engaged, for free competition takes notice of and 
allows for differences of ability and of capital ad- 
justment, and for differences in riskiness, healthi- 
ness, agreeableness and permanency of pursuits. 
It settles with all parties according to real worths 
expended, as also it decides what are the real 
worths. The extra energetic and capable com- 
mand their real worth while the less gifted are 
not denied their full share. Allowances at all 
times are to be made for incidental misjudgments 
of men and incidental irregularities of nature, 
which, while they occur, are nothing compared to 
what unfair distribution causes, at the same time 
that the hardships they entail are minimumized 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. II 7 

by the tendency of free conditions to promote 
quick corrections. 

Profitableness of vocations being equalized, all 
rewards of course would be proportioned to value 
or amount of expenditure. As it is the dis- 
position of nature to repay man's expenditure 
upon her nvith interest, the natural effect of pro- 
portional reward is to enrich all people in common. 
Enrichment aside of impoverishment is a sure 
sign of misgovernment. 

SUPPLY AND DEMAND. 

The work of equalizing the profitableness of 
pursuits (and reward with earnings) is inseparably 
joined also to the work of equalizing supply with 
demand. This is occasioned by the impossibility 
of consummating the one event without consum- 
mating also the other. Why, we may proceed 
to show. 

The cost of creating an over-supply is not pro- 
portionately less than the cost of creating an 
even or an under-supply, while an unconsumed 
excess is the occasion of loss, sometimes of 
enough loss to wipe out all profits or to bring 
one into deficiency. Again, a great share of 
the things furnished for the consumption of man 
are of such a perishable nature that if not con- 
sumed as fast as they are prepared they entail 



Il8 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

absolute loss upon the producer to the extent of 
the cost of their production. Again, less perish- 
ing and long lasting articles need to be disposed 
of in due season that capital may not be bound up 
unutilizable and unremunerative, and that funds 
may not be wanting for the furnishing of a new 
season's supply. Again, over-supply wants to 
be avoided because the advance discovery of 
over-supply impels to a lowering of prices upon 
that portion of products disposed of, which adds 
to the loss occasioned by there being an excess 
which is never disposed of. For instance, a pre- 
ponderance of articles of any given kind being 
prepared, the sluggishness of trade soon opens 
the eyes of owners to the fact of over-supply in 
their particular Hne. The too numerous gar- 
deners or shoe manufacturers foresee by the way 
patronage begins, that it will not be sufficiently 
active to take up commodities in such a manner 
as to obviate loss from deterioration and decay, 
to provide funds to meet current bills, and 
to supply means to prosecute vigorously the 
fashioning of supplies for the 3'ear to come. The 
over-crowded grocers discover from the slug- 
gishness of trade that the sale and replenishment 
of goods is going on twice as slow as it should to 
yield at current prices, the customary profit. As 
soon as those caught in over-supply discover their 
situations, they know what they must expect 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION, II 9 

and what they must do. Any one of them knows 
that if he should attempt to maintain standard 
prices under such a situation, he would be punished 
for his folly by being allowed to permanently 
retain his wares and to suffer greater loss than if 
he sold at a discount. But no one of sane mind 
attempts such a suicidal course. What each does 
do when he is caught in such a situation is to 
adopt the course of avoiding the greatest loss by 
enduring the least loss. , He offers inducements 
to stimulate patronage and reduce to a minimum, 
waste and non-purchasers; also to vie with others 
whom he knows are controlled by the same 
motives as he. 

But the efforts to minimumize loss, when 
caught in the predicament of oyer-supply, is not 
a profitable business, therefore the people labor 
not to be caught in such predicament, on the 
contrary, labor to keep supply even with de- 
mand. 

We see then that over-done pursuits are the 
poor paying pursuits ; that over-supply and poor 
pay go together. Therefore, when people 
leave poor paying pursuits because they are 
poor paying, they leave them just as much be- 
cause they are over-supplying, and when they 
leave over-supplying pursuits they render them 
better paying by withdrawing agencies of sup- 
ply and adding to the agencies of demand, and 



^ 



I20 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

when they have withdrawn until the profitable- 
ness of the pursuits they have left are rendered 
equal to the average, they have pursued a course 
which has reduced the supply of the fruits in the 
discarded vocations to a harmony with a de- 
mand for them. 

These several harmonies caused to take place 
are not the direct objects aimed at by those who 
bring them about. They are the results of the 
forcible promptings of every individual to serve 
himself best, combined with the provision which 
forbids any one to interfere with another in his 
fair and rightful attempt to carry his promptings 
into actions. They are the result of a desire of 
each to attain to the highest standard, combined 
with the impossibility of all attaining to the 
highest without each getting equally high. 
They are the results of the calculations men 
form to avoid making expenditures in one di- 
rection that will be less remunerative than ex- 
penditures in another direction, which calcula- 
tions embrace considerations referred to above, 
relating to unsales, total sales, slow sales, quick 
sales, dangers arising from over-supply and 
other mis- attempts. Men prompted by their 
propensities and guided by self-saving conside- 
rations, do wh'at endsxn balancing rate of profit 
with rate of profit, reward with earnings and 
supply with demand. When balance has been 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. -^21 

established, people have no further to seek, with 
respect to these devices, for the improvement 
of themselves. Each is doing the best it is pos- 
sible for him to do, so far as concerns what is to 
be gained through industrial harmony, and he 
must be and is content to rest satisfied on that 
score while perfected adjustments continue. 

I desire now to call attention to some other 
facts pertaining to these harmonies. 

The harmonies caused to take place, are, in 
the first place, harmonies of earnings. The dis- 
pensing of profits, rewards and supplies in their 
harmonious relationships refer to the distribution 
of earnings in their proper proportions. It all 
has to do with earnings. 

All earnings are utilized, manifesting that 
freemen appreciate what is the true object of 
endeavor and getting. 

People have their leading wants satisfied. 
That is as much as is conveyed in the idea of 
harmony of supply and demand. It is question- 
able whether society will ever be able to satisfy 
in full the demands it will ever and anon be 
making against itself. No such possibility is 
now observable. Demand is equal to supply 
when commodities prepared for consumption or 
utilization can be parted with ataveragely remu- 
nerative rates within such a period after they are 
prepared as to prevent perishment of goods. 



122 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

need of funds for continuous or reasonable ope- 
ration, or there being in the way undisposed 
stock when the time is past due for the way to 
be cleared and ready for the admission of new 
supply. In other words equal demand is due 
and reasonable exhaustion, in order and con- 
tinuously, of supplies of the people in satisfaction of 
their leading wants. That is as much as we can 
say of demand in view of the people's extraordinary 
power of amplification of needs. 

Seasonable or normal consumption of supplies 
is due to these two circumstances: 

1st. The carrying of each one's efforts and 
capital hither and thither, or the retention of them 
in place, in free response to the desire to comply 
with demand. 

2d. The making of each one's earnings the 
standard by which is measured his gettings and 
givings. 

In as much as the people at best are capable of 
only partially supplying their needs, there is no 
possibilit}^ of any industry natm-ally existing 
which produced something the people did not 
want. The competition to get into good paying 
businesses would kill them all ofi',and leave not an 
item of supply to come forth that did not, under 
all ordinary circumstances, have an appropriate 
niche to fill. Under such conditions there could 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 23 

not be anything but a round and round of industry 
to try to keep up with demand. 

As competition rewards according to earnings 
there is no way to get supphes distributed to their 
appropriate places except to govern the amount 
given to each by the amount he has earned. You 
then exhaust suppl}^ for if persons are rewarded 
in full of amount earned it takes all earnings to 
reward them. 

What is distributed back to each governs the 
amount each can bring foward again, the kind 
needed being regulated as before by the effort to 
produce for best pay. Again is the value taken 
back by each governed by the amount each has 
brought forward and the supply exhausted in 
making full compensation. 

The competition to secure greatest profit 
compels each individual or corporate industrian to 
apportion and assign his energies and capital as 
public wants dictate. The expense of keeping up 
this energy and capital thus arranged calls for 
the amount of values they contribute. 

The subject becomes narrowed down to one 
of compatibility of needs with means in the indi- 
vidual. Each industrian has become so engaged 
that he needs all his means will get him, yet has 
no stern needs that his means will not supply. 
Each possesses needs and means to match, can 
produce in harmony with his needs and consume 



124 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

as much as he produces, thus keeping the field of 
his wants fihing up and emptying by a constant 
process. This is harmony as respects each unit 
of society. The situation of the units of society 
images the situation of society as a whole. 

For the further illustration of this subject let 
us make use of an individual whom we will name 
John. Let us suppose John to engage with 2 
capital of $175.00 in the beginning of the year 
1880. 

John, with the aid of $175.00 earns $600.00 in 

1880. He uses $400.00 and saves $200.00 for 
1881. 

John, with the aid of $200.00 earns $650.00 in 

1 88 1. He uses $425.00 and saves $225.00 for 
1882. 

John, with the aid of $225.00 earns $700.00 in 

1882. He uses $450.00 and saves $250.00 for 

1883. 

John goes on thus, producing within the bounds 
of his earnings, as likewise he consumes within 
the same bounds. We observe that John need 
let no value that was designed for him go unused 
for want of purchasing capacity. Nor is there 
any danger of him and those engaged in the like 
business producing out of all proportion to the 
demands for their wares, as they might do in any 
season after their capital was suddenly doubled by 
the chance to extort unfair prices. Kept within 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 25 

wholesome* bounds and aided as they are by the 
proper proportion of means they will exercise the 
best possible judgment and consistenc}^ in catering 
to public demands. 

Owing to the over-responsiveness of nature, we 
are made to observe that John grows richer 3'ear 
after year. Owing to his desire to live better at 
the present and to improve his future condition 
also, we are led to see that he divides his increase 
of wealth between himself and his capital. As 
he grows richer he will dispense with the wearing 
of shoddy goods, and the eating of adulterated 
foods. He will demand good goods as well as 
increased varieties. As John does, so does all his 
fellow beings. John is only an image of the 
rest, big and little. They demand good goods of 
him just as much as he demands good goods of 
them. But John is equal to the occasion. He 
can furnish them what they want for he has the 
means of supplying himself with the facilities, like 
improved stocks of raw material, improved buil- 
dings, and everything else needed to supply in 
compliance with the improved demand. As can 
John do, so can every other industrian in society 
do. As does all industrians so does societ}^ 

We see, then, that free competition is not only 
a harmonizer of earnings, but an employer ot 
harmonized earnings for the maintainance of 
harmony. It gives each industrian no more than 



126 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

is compatible with his needs as a producer and 
consumer, at the same time that it supplies him 
with a sufficiency. It provides for balance and 
consistency throughout by check and enable- 
ment of each person within and up to the possi- 
bilities his earnings confer. It makes harmony 
and the getting of harmony mutually respon- 
sive and promotive. 

OVER-PRODUCTION. / 

I have explained that, left entirely free to 
choose how they will expend their energies and 
their capital, people contain within themselves 
the forces for so adjusting their affairs as to 
make all things harmonize. I have shown, also, 
that in the absence of industrial freedom there 
can be nothing but the most aggravated dishar- 
monies, because that absence promotes the lift- 
ing into power and control those who will do all 
they can to create in their favor disharmonies. 
And I have shown that, without free competi- 
tion, earnings could not be harmoniously dis- 
posed, though man strived to his utmost for such 
a consummation, owing to his powerlessness to 
decide in advance, whenever a reward is to be 
disbursed, what should be the size of the reward. 
I may now proceed to notice in juxtaposition 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. I 2 7 

what are some of the dispensations and engage- 
ments of anti-free conditions. 

The more visible effects of unfair distribution, 
such as the self-denial imposed upon those who 
must part with portions of their earnings with- 
out equivalent, I shall not make the subject of 
attention here, but shall proceed at once to ex- 
amine into the subject of over-production. 

Over-production is the champion representa- 
tive of unfair distribution, and becomes of itself 
an occasion and instrumentality of a train of mis- 
eries worse in character than those which unfair 
distribution immediately gives rise to. 

Over-production is over-supply, the excess of 
supply over demand, occurring from the intro- 
duction into society of devices for the appropria- 
tion of earnings without giving value for them. 
The fundamental devices for this work are unfair 
taxation and unfair exchange. Those who do not 
pay their full share of tax save more than their 
proportionate share of earnings, or make a gain 
by getting service for less than it is worth. 
Those who exchange unfairly make a gain, con- 
sisting of savings of their own earaings, or of 
overdue proportions gotten from those with 
whom they exchange. Allow one class, and a 
small one, as it always is, to gain continuously 
from all the rest in their dispensations and deal- 
ings with all the rest, and you generate a morbid 



128 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

quantity which the class getting it cannot use 
either for ordinary personal consumption or pro- 
fitably as capital, and which the class from 
whom it was taken cannot use in any natural 
way, because it is no longer theirs to use. It 
stands out as an independent quantity to be used 
for some other purpose than the natural opera- 
tions of production and consumption. It is 
a gain in the ownership of those who have ex- 
acted it, but there is nothing like a consideration 
or value received for it in the hands of those 
from whom it was gained. It is a portion in 
stake over and above what could be paid down 
for from current earnings if those from whom it 
was taken were compelled to purchase it at once. 
Where and in what forms does this gain ex- 
ist.^ There is in possession of the exactors, when 
a season's operations have been concluded, first, 
retained on hand of their own make, products 
which would not have been retained had they 
let their wares go at earned valuations; secondly, 
in possession of them of the people's make, pro- 
ducts which they would not have got had they 
taken the people's wares at earned valuations; 
thirdly, cash and debt evidences surrendered to 
bridge over the deficit the hard terms of the ex- 
actors created in the people's expense and profit 
account. Each season intensifies matters on both 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 



129 



sides — g-ives the exactors more surplus, creates 
on the side of the masses greater vacuity. 

If the exactors made way with their gains 
they could prevent over-production, but they 
cannot do this in any ordinary way Increased 
expenditure for food, clothing and luxuries by 
a limited number of exactors will not suffice to 
make way with the gains that can be absorbed 
from the balance of the nation. They might 
by actually destroying their gains, prevent ex- 
cessive accumulation, and keep the masses con- 
tinuously engaged at furnishing new supply. 
But something like this would have to be done. 
They cannot use it as capital. If in one year 
they parted not with all they produced what 
sort of incentive is there for increasing the 
production of another year? 

They do increase their capitalistic invest- 
ments however. Capital abhors idleness and 
so finds investment. Railroads increase their 
mileage. Factories enlarge their plants. Spec- 
ulators engage in all sorts of false enterprises, 
but it is only a wild hunt for gains — gains standing 
opposed to vacuity — to find a way to make them- 
selves remunerative. How well such invest- 
ments succeed is answered by telling how well 
over-investments succeed. 

Considered with reference to legitimate use or 
employment we can truly say that gains can 



130 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

neither be enjoyed or emplo3xd by those who get 
them. Their only function is to develop over- 
extravagance, over-production and over-invest- 
ment as opposed to over-indigence, under-con- 
sumption, and under-investment. 

Another point or two about over-production. 
If we consider the gains of exactors as so much 
taken from the peoples' earnings, we can consider 
what the people retain as so much saved out of 
their earnings. That being so we can state that 
to supply themselves with the necessaries of life 
the people must produce an excess. Where 
persons have had to contract their consumption of 
essentials on account of the severity of exaction, 
the excess stands opposed to states of real depri- 
vation, or lack of necessaries. This excess would 
have been, in the absence of exaction, consumed. 
In the case of persons who have saved enough to 
supply themselves with necessaries, iheir excess 
is the product of exertion that would have been 
devoted to the satisfaction of higher wants. Thus 
it is seen that over-production represents a double 
portion, a portion corresponding to essential needs 
and a portion in excess of essential needs, and 
which would never have been but for exaction. 

Over-production consists mainly of staple com- 
modities. Why } Exaction is applied in the 
direction of exigency of demand. The climaxic 
desideratum of productive efforts is a quick 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. I31 

market, If immediate or seasonable disposal 
cannot be had the nearest approach to it is 
sought. Though the commodities of over-pro- 
duction are not seasonably disposable, that form 
in which they find quickest disposal is staples, or 
things adapted to suppl}^ peoples' commoner 
wants. This arises from two facts; first, the com- 
modities are destined to be consumed b}^ the 
people; secondly, exaction, through impairment of 
the purchase power, confines people to the con- 
sumption of necessities. It may appear like an 
anomalous expression, the saying that what the 
people are prevented from immediately pur- 
chasing they are destined to purchase and con- 
sume in the end, but paradoxical as it may seem, 
it is true, as will be fully explained, and as has 
been indicated in stating the requisition precedent 
of the employers of Notseen when they had 
brought on over-production. A proportionate 
share of the articles of over-production consists of 
things calculated to satisf}' the higher wants of 
man, intellectual and pleasurable on the part of 
those who can afford them, owing to equalizing 
tendencies. But as the bulk of the population 
are reduced to the condition »of consumers of 
essentials onty, and as the over-production is 
destined mainly for their consumption, it is evolved 
by the law of trade mainly into the form of 
staples. 



132 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 



RESTRICTED COMPETITION. 

We often hear the advocates of exaction dis- 
coursing upon the evils of competition, the ruin 
it causes, and the necessity of pools and combin- 
ations to avoid it. The kind of competition the}^ 
refer to is the competition born of combination 
and pools, and exaction generally. It is a com- 
petition of sellers. It is the competition of over- 
investors to make three industries live, when 
two would have fattened had the capital of the 
third been left with the under-investors to 
develop trade to match. It is the competition 
of surpluses to find sales among a class who have 
been robbed of their means of purchase. It is the 
competition of money to find borrowers, when 
the people have discovered that the savings of 
outlay cannot be made to equal outlay. It is 
the competition of homesteads to get sales to 
save the owners from entire wreck. It is the 
competition of laborers to sell services when the 
high-profit industries are overdone and the com- 
mon industries have not the means or the en- 
couragement to hire. 

This competition is at its climax when over- 
production is at its climax — when surpluses are 
doing their best to unload themselves upon the 
people in exchange for the people's preposses- 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 33 

sions or capital. It is attended with low prices, 
failures, foreclosures, riots and all sorts of trou- 
bles — at their worst, also, when over-production 
is at its worst — which are born of the competi- 
tion to sell without there being a corresponding 
lot of equally anxious buyers. It is, indeed, the 
tumult of capital, frenzied at being forbidden to 
profit more, and struggling to adjust itself to 
some basis of profit. Such competition is ruin- 
ous and retrogressive. By way of paralyzing 
our efforts, undermining our resources, and cre- 
ating losses and setbacks generally, it affords 
abundant reasons for disparagement of competi- 
tion so long as restricted competition is made the 
subject of disparagement. 

Against the results of free competition no 
complaint can be urged. The first impulse is to 
object that competition will reduce all businesses 
to a low grade rate of profitableness. But, to 
reply, the best and the worst that free competi- 
tion can do is to make all accept the same rate 
of profit. If labor and capital are cofitinuously 
engaged, and at greatest advantage, w^hat can 
there be but an increase of wealth out of all pro- 
portion to the present standards of increase; and 
who must get this wealth, and who must accept 
low profits.^ 

Free competition, I am convinced, would 
double or treble the national increase of wealth, 



134 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

because all the forces of wealth-making would 
be constantly and most advantageously em- 
ployed. 

It would enrich all mankind, because such ac- 
celerated wealth-increase, fairly distributed, could 
not do otherwise. 

It would drive indigence from every door, be- 
cause that could not but occur where the poor- 
est had steady employment at more remu- 
nerative rates than now. 

It would do away with slothful habits, because 
the opportunity to handsomely profit could not 
be withstood. 

Speculation would yield to honest industry, 
because capital seeks honest investment first, 
speculation afterward. 

Investments would be in improvements rather 
than extensions, because the natural outlet of 
excess wealth is in betterments of quarters and 
surroundings. 

Corners in commodities would become un- 
known, because everybody could compete and 
prevent them. 

Adulterations would cease, because people 
could afford to indulge in the genuine. 

Lastly, " the greatest good to the greatest 
number " would have to succumb to the suprem- 
acy of a superior motto : " The great good of 
all." 



CHAPTER V. 



MONOPOLY. 



An unjustifiable device of man for the pVofit of 
himself is the monopoly of industries. 

The monopoly of an industry is such control 
over it as affects the exclusion of rivals. The 
purpose of monopoly is to enable those in control 
to dictate terms of self-enrichment, chiefi}' by 
maximumizing prices charged and minimum- 
izing prices paid. In this chapter I shall confine 
myself to some of the remoter effects of monopoly 
considered as an instrumentality in and of itself. 

IRRESISTIBLE DIVESTMENT OF PROPERTIES 
AND PRIVELEGES. 

Unfair distribution through the instrumentality 
of monopoly may be called exaction in exchange. 
It is a method of commerce in which one class is 
compelled to deal with another class and to give 
the other class all the advantages there is in the 
bargain. The first result is gains, surplus, over- 



136 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

production. The second result is rapid and total 
divestment of the one class for the aggrandizement 
of the other. 

The divestment is carried on through the pro- 
cess of forcing the people to redeem the gains or 
commodities of over-production, and to substitute 
for them their homes, their fixed possessions, and 
added services — to buy back lost earnings and to 
pay for them with that which is back of current 
earnings, and which we may call for short ^'pre- 
possessions." The end can be but total impov- 
erishment for the masses who are thus imposed 
upon. How else can it result.^ How is it possible 
for the masses to deal with the exactors and con- 
tinuously give them the advantage without falling 
back upon their prepossessions time and again 
until everything is lost, to find something to settle 
differences with. 

It may be said that there is no such a thing as 
a deal between the exactors and the masses in 
the sense of a commerce between two parties. 
There is nevertheless. The commerce of any 
individual is his exchange, either of service or 
commodity, with the balance of the world. He 
buys, sells, exchanges with those around him; he 
is their customer, they are his. Between the 
exactors and the masses or people as contradistin- 
guished from them, those transactions which 
severally transpire, having the exactors on the 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 37 

one side, the people on the other, compose a 
distinct and separate body of transactions as 
between the two. Although visibly interwoven 
and crossed by the transactions between the 
members of the exactors themselves and those 
between the members of the masses themselves, 
those which occur between the masses and the 
exactors constitute a distinct line of tran 
sactions, just as distinct as those which occur be- 
tween one man and another or between one nation 
and another. 

Now let us illustrate in a wa}' that a child can 
understand. We will suppose that two men get 
and remain together for a period of time, each 
man having a horse worth $100.00 and one of 
the men having $100.00 in cash besides. We 
will suppose further that under a stress of cir- 
cumstances, not material to be specified in kind 
for this illustration, the men trade horses once a 
day and the man with $100.00 cash gives always 
$10.00 to boot. Will he not upon the tenth 
trade have lost all his money .^ Then if the}" 
continue trading in the same one-sided way, will 
not the man that has lost his money indebt him- 
self to the other at the rate of $10.00 per day, and 
will he not on the tenth day have lost his horse .^ 
He will most assuredly, and just as assuredly will 
the masses lose all of their properties through 



138 UNFAIR dis'];;ribution. 

having to deal with the exactors in the same one- 
sided way. 

At first blush it might be supposed that the 
way for the masses to make up for the exactions 
of the monopolists is to work hard and produce 
plenty to sell. Under a system of unfair trade 
such attempt only makes it worse for the people. 
In the illustration of Notseen (page 18), we saw 
that every day the employes labored after their 
wages were cut down, added to the size of the 
portion that current wages would not bu}-. 
Every day of labor produced the portion which 
answered as wages and left a percentage to go 
into surplus. That is the situation between the 
masses and the exactors. The exactors conduct 
certain affairs of industr}^ on the one side, the 
masses on the other. In the dealings between 
them the exactors dictate the terms both ways, 
they say what they charge and they say what 
they pa}^ The consequence is a difference 
always in their favor. The more the masses try 
to work and earn to overcome this difference 
the more must they deal with the exactors and 
therefore the larger and faster do the}' make this 
difference grow. Undertaking to reduce it by 
extra energy in production or extra time in service 
is like expecting that perseverence in the attempt 
will at length enable a person to balance weekl}^ 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 39 

expenditures of $10.00 with weekly receipts of 
$8.00. 

There is no doubt a vague impression among 
folks who have not given the subject much thought 
that the exactors have some way of disposing of 
gained surpluses within. themselves; that it is not 
made to reflect to the disadvantage of those from 
whom it is taken after it has left the latter 's hands ; 
that the deprivation caused by the dispossessment 
is the total and ultimate of the injury entailed 
upon the masses on account of the exaction. ^ In 
short that there can be such a thing as submitting 
to monopolistic exaction and holding on to ones 
property at the same time. 

But the two cannot go together. As the 
revenue of gains stands opposed to a correspon- 
ding blank on the people's side, it makes it pos- 
sible for exactors to invest in the people's pre- 
possessions. As they think it politic to do so, 
it is done. The same cause which makes it 
politic and possible for them to invest in peoples' 
prepossessions makes it, as we shall show, politic 
and necessary for the people to part with their 
prepossessions. It is a mathematical impossibil- 
ity for one class to deal with another and contin- 
uously give that other the advantage without reg- 
ularly and periodically yielding up, to balance the 
advantage, portion by portion, of prepossessions. 
It does not appear to me that this needs more 



140 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

than to be stated to be seen, yet It needs to be 
stated that those who have never looked into 
the matter may be apprised of an Inevitable 
fact and danger. 

It is argued by some that a brisk foreign trade 
would prevent or exhaust over-production. It 
Is hard for me to see, In the first place, how 
there could be any brisk foreign market for us 
with all other countries in the same dog-in- 
the-manger condition as ours — the rich surfeited, 
the masses robbed of their means to buy. In 
the second place, I cannot see how the ex- 
change of our over-productions for other coun- 
tries' over-productions would better enable the 
masses to consume them. The natural product- 
for-product trade has been destroyed In devel- 
oping the gain, and the gain can be exhausted 
only by exchanging itself for something else 
than products. 

It is readily seen how gains are resolvable In- 
to and absorb properties, but not so readily seen 
how they resolve into and absorb services. I 
can best explain the matter by reference to 
the illustration of Notseen. There, after the 
cut In wages, the surplus accumulated at the 
rate of $237.50 worth per day, on account of 
the employes receiving but five days' earnings 
for six days' work. The employing proprietors 
could have resolved this surplus, had It been 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. I4I 

their design to prevent accumulation, by taking 
the employes away from their regular work on 
the sixth day, or during one-sixth of the time, 
and engaged them at work specifically unpro- 
ductive of common needs and intrinsically for 
their own, the employers' benefits. They could 
have engaged the men in beautifying the grounds 
around their, the employers', premises, or in or- 
namenting the exterior and interior of their 
buildings, and in ministering to their whims and 
caprices generally. Or they might have contin- 
uously engaged five-sixths of the men in the pro- 
duction of physical necessaries and kept the rest 
as body servants. Proceeding in this way would 
be a draft upon the services and energies of the 
people instead of upon properties. The under- 
lying principle is the same in both. The deliv- 
ery of the service is as purely gratuitous and 
onerous as the delivery of tangible property. 
Both are the act of earning over again what one 
has earned. 

Draft upon services will constitute the only 
form of divestment of the people when they once 
have been completely divested of their freeholds. 
Enough of the masses will be engaged upon 
staples to produce the supply, and the balance ot 
energies will be devoted to pandering to the 
rich. One small class will possess the land, or liens 
upon it equivalent to possession, and all the good- 



142 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

ness and splendor and luxury which can be sup- 
plied with millions of teeming hands, while the 
majority of the possessors of the millions of teem- 
ing hands will share nothing but the scantiest of 
diet and covering from birth to the grave. 

While the masses, or the larger share of them, 
still own freeholds, the larger share of gains will 
be devoted to the procurement of properties, either 
to be directly held, as are held railroads, manu- 
facturing and mining properties, or indirectly held 
through mortgage and bonded indebtednesses. 
Many of the exactors will live lives of com- 
parative economy that the}^ may have much 
gains to devote to the accumulation of properties. 
It could only be expected that the disposition to 
gain would vent itself in the accumulation of 
properties, since properties serve as the means of 
increasing gains. When all properties have been 
laid hold on, the exactors have no other outlet 
for their gains except upon services. These 
they can utilize by making them serve purposes 
of dignification, pomp, fancifulness and extrava- 
gance. By that time, however, the effective- 
ness of the masses as producers will have 
become so thoroughly weakened, and the pro- 
pensities and desires of the exactors will have 
become so amplified and insatiable, that the 
exactors as a class will not, through the utter- 
most oppression of their dependents, be able to 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 43 

satisfy all their demands. When this uttermost 
limit is reached everything conspires to bring on 
governmental dismemberment and collapse. 

We can now perceive the characteristic mode 
of divestment involved in the action of industrial 
and trade monopoly. Confiscation of properties 
without ceremony, after the manner practiced 
by arbitrary kings and emperors of olden times, 
for instance, was sudden and palpable. It is not 
so with monopolied divestment. Properties are 
absorbed by degrees through the settlement of 
differences. Bringing people around to a state of 
non-freeholdness and slavery by gains upon earn- 
ings and reconversion of gains into properties 
lacks nothing in the way of certainty, however; 
what it lacks is instantaneousness, shock and ap- 
pearance of tyranny, and in the eye of the shrewd 
exactor is detected as the only measure that 
could be enforced in a country where the people 
believe they are free and independent. 

It might be asked, in a system of fair distri- 
bution would persons ever lose their properties? 
The answer is, if an individual were inclined to be 
a do-nothing, or a spendthrift, or both, he would, 
and it would be his own fault. But the average 
of such traits and habits in all classes would tend 
to reciprocally restore losses and keep up balances. 
In unfair distribution the masses are compelled 
to part with their possessions, out of the nature of 



144 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

the operation of unfair distribution, and regardless 
of whether they try to save their possessions or 
not. 

Where was fair distribution there would be 
dealings in and exchanges of properties as now, 
but as one class would not be constantly setting 
aside clear gains and requiring them to be taken 
back and settled for with prepossessions, each 
class would always hold its own. As a conse- 
quence, extra earnings seeking investment, would 
be applied immediately and continuously to im- 
provements and the common enrichment, instead 
of being set aside, held for opportunity, and used 
as they now are. And as there would never be 
any over-production, never any industrial de- 
pression, never any stoppage of production, no 
idle populace standing unemployed and shouting 
for work half the year round, no producing class 
crippled for want of means to effectually produce 
with, wealth would accumulate very fast and 
properties would soon assume a high state of per- 
fection and the people in common would soon be 
most admirably circumstanced. 

In maintaining the entire divestment of the 
masses as a result of unfair distribution, it is not 
argued that the divestment of the different in- 
dividuals of the masses will take place propor- 
tionately, each person parting with a share of 
his possessions in each decade. Difference of 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 45 

original circumstances and capacities preclude 
the intervention of the same guards and degrees 
of resistances to the divesting inevitabilities of 
unfair distribution. The weaker ones will go 
first, and while they are being wrecked, the 
stronger among the masses will be getting 
ahead to some extent as compared with the 
progress of other members of the masses, but 
generally falling back as compared with the 
progress of the exactors. When the first 
weaker have been ruined, then the next weak- 
er will be on the verge of ruin, the whole body 
of the masses being pushed down step by step. 
The process will continue until the ruin is en- 
compassed of all except now and then a person 
who has been so favorably circumstanced as to 
be able to take advantage and get on the eleva- 
ting side of an order of things which tears down 
the one and builds up the other out of the ruins. 
Such an one, then, from a necessary law of 
man's nature, becomes an exactor himself. 
But for one that goes up thousands will go 
down to toil and deprivation in the Interest of 
and for the support and aggrandizement of 
those who lord it over them. 

It is not claimed, either, that the divestment 
of the people will always have on the face of it 
the appearance of necessity. Many people will 
sell their properties from preference w^hen a 



146 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

price is proffered for them. This looks very 
voluntary as long as we do not inquire where 
the exactors get the money to buy with, and do 
not inquire too closely into the motives of the 
common people in continually parting with their 
possessions, and into the necessity that impels 
many to part with their possessions in excess at 
certain periods. It is a maxim that good pay- 
ing properties do not love to part company with 
their owners; it is true, also, that a property 
seeks to convey itself out of ownership of him 
who saves but little of its produce and into own- 
ership of him who appropriates much of its pro- 
duce. The masses produce an abundance upon 
their properties, the exactors appropriate the 
spare, and more than can be spared, of the 
abundance. This makes the existino^ owner 
want to sell, and the exactor, desiring ready in- 
vestment for his gain, wishes to buy. Upon the 
surface nothing like compulsion is discoverable. 
Superficial observation simply discloses that the 
railroads, certain classes of manufactories, mines 
and other concerns are yielding enormous profits. 
That these profits are reinvested in more rail- 
roads, manufactories, mines and the like. That 
after one class of properties is bought up, another 
class of properties is bought up, either in the 
shape of the properties themselves, or in the 
shape of loans and mortgages, the twin equiva- 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 47 

lents of ownership, and gain generators in an- 
other form. It is thus that investment succeeds 
investment, and in the absence of forced sales 
there is all the appearance of volun tariness. 

But though voluntary appearing, the whole is 
coercion; is a rendering of the properties and 
services of the masses into the hands of exactors 
out of the intrinsic impossibiHty of giving to one 
side the continuous advantage without balancing 
up with properties or services, or both. Gain 
continuously in one direction aggrandizes the 
recipients and distresses the surrenderers irresis- 
tibly. 

OBLIGATORINESS OF MONOPOLY. 

Having seen that exaction in exchange, or un- 
fair distribution through industrial and trade 
monopoly, inevitably, and by reason of its being 
a cause which can have no other effect, induces 
to the surrender of the people's properties and 
spare services, we may next appropriately dis- 
cuss the quality of obligatoriness which attaches 
to this exaction or unfair distribution. It ma}' 
be asked, are the people com felled to submit to 
exactions upon their earnings and then to redeem 
with their properties and services the gains 
which have been exacted from them.^ 

One sufficient answer would be, that the fact 
of unfair distribution and its results implies the 



148 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

presence of a means or instrumentality powerful, 
deceptive or otherwise, adequate to the enforce- 
ment of the same. Otherwise, the judgments of 
men would secure fairness. But when we look 
into the nature of this instrumentality, we find 
it to be compulsory, and thoroughly so. The in- 
strumentality is the monopolization of businesses 
and industries. The monopolization being of 
those businesses and industries which relate to 
the production, conveyance and trade in the 
prime necessities of life; the great railroads and 
great mining, manufacturing and other concerns 
that, as businesses and industries are essential to 
supply wants, yet disposed into the form of mon- 
opolies work detrimentally, the people are not 
at liberty to dispense with them upon any 
grounds they may set up. 

They may be fully cognizant that they are 
being uniformly and infamously cheated and 
stripped; they may deplore their ill-conditioned- 
ness and desire, ever so much, to avoid con- 
nection and communication with the machinery 
that they know is formed for their miss-usage 
and wronging; but it would be just as impossible 
for them to render themselves independent of 
these monopolies as it would be to render them- 
selves independent of the needs for iron, clothes, 
coal, kerosene and transportation services which 
these monopolists control. The producer must 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. I49 

sell his raw commodity to them and must 
transport through them, because there are none 
others to whom he can go for the purpose ; the 
consumer must purchase for certain needs of 
what they produce, because none others are 
allowed to produce in answer to these needs; the 
laborer must serve with them without privilege 
of choice, because other employments exclude 
when they have absorbed their quota of laborers. 
Thus we see that the people are as necessitated 
to deal with the monopolists, and, at the same 
time, to submit to their exactions as they are to 
exert, eat and dress for support of existence. 

The same helplessness of state which compels 
the people to trade and pile up surpluses or gains, 
in varied forms, compels them to reduce and 
redeem these gains again in such manner as the 
exactors design. I will restate that the work of 
converting gains into people's properties and ser- 
vices does not look at all times like positive com- 
pulsion. During the progress of a decade the 
monopolists will be continually converting their 
o-ains into people's prepossessions. In common 
words, they will be devoting their profits to the 
procurement of one class and another of pro- 
perties throughout the country, directing their 
acquiring specifically, until all was compassed 
that was desired, upon certain classes of pro- 
perties which they should begin with. For 



150 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

instance, Vanderbilt, Gould and cohorts would 
first possess themselves of all the railroads of the 
country, using the profits upon previously mono- 
polized lines to embarrass and take in those rail- 
roads not within the charmed circle. In like 
manner Rockafeller and ring would master the 
oil business and others would master the iron and 
coal industries. After these lines of properties 
were secured, other classes of properties would 
become objects of gains, such as bodies of lands, 
blocks in cities, timber tracts, cattle herds. If 
real properties were not available or suited to 
personal ownership, mortgages upon properties 
would be purchased and bonded indebtednesses. 
At the same time much of these gains would be 
converted into services for adornments, extrava- 
gances and luxuriousness. All this would appear 
voluntary. Properties which the exactors 
bought the owners were willing to sell, and 
people were more than willing, they were anx- 
ious to minister to the enjoyments of exactors; 
to part with their services to the exactors. In 
fact it is voluntary on the part of the people, if 
that can be called voluntary which induces them, 
after the harshness of exaction prevents them 
from continuing profitably or even so as to make 
a living at their old vocations, to part, and 
gladly too, with their properties and services in 
return for exacted gains. 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. I5I 

But the exactors do not get all of their gains 
converted into people's prepossessions in a semi- 
voluntary manner, and what they do not get con- 
verted in this way they get converted by arbi- 
trary redemption when the conditions have rip- 
ened for the work. The ripened conditions are: 
a flood of over-productions, occasioned by the 
self-made economy of the people in trying to 
hold their properties intact; a general money- 
lessness and indebtedness of the people, occa- 
sioned by a severity of exaction that left the 
people too little of their own earnings to meet 
the requirements of even the severest exaction; 
a time when goods and materials cannot be fur- 
ther accumulated or longer held without danger 
of serious loss from decay and shrinkage; a time 
when debts cannot be further enlarged without 
their over-reaching the securities upon which 
they are based; a time when money sees better 
opportunities of reward ahead than ordinary 
ways of investment afford; a time, in short, when 
for safety's sake, factories are closed down, set- 
tlements of debts are enforced, and the conver- 
sion current is made to be the strongest current. 
Then is when there is arbitrary redemption. 
Monopolists compel the people to take off the 
former's hands the surplus stocks they have ac- 
cumulated, by refraining from the manufacture 
of more until these are disposed of. Exactors 



152 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

force to disownership, directly or by permanent 
debt lien, those who are deeply in debt, and the 
money — it comes out and takes in the properties 
at a song, or makes settlements at a great shave. 
During this time, known as industrial depression, 
there is an under-current of production and cus- 
tomary exaction going on, but the main current 
is the conversion current, and it maintains the 
ascendency until the surpluses have been well re- 
duced. 

It can be readily seen how factory stocks can 
be reduced by the stoppage of manufacture un- 
til the}^ are disposed of, but perhaps not so read- 
ily understood how agricultural produce can be 
reduced while agriculturalists go on producing 
in a manner without coming to full stop as fac- 
tories are accustomed to do. Let it be under- 
stood that during industrial depressions agricul- 
tural work is fitful and diversive,low prices caus- 
ing this class of people to be trying at one spec- 
ialty and then at another in order to find some- 
thing that will pay, and that this vain experi- 
menting entails great loss and greatly reduced 
production. Then much of agricultural pro- 
duce spoils in elevators and in farmer's bins, and 
it can be shown that wars and famines are in- 
duced by unfair distribution, and are potent 
agencies for reducing surpluses of all kinds, and 
invariably at the expense of the masses. 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 53 

It can be now understood that the exactors 
have it in their power to compel the people to 
deal with them, and to give them the advantage; 
they have it in their power to obtain from the 
people in a semi-voluntary manner their pos- 
sessions and services as events progress ; they 
have it in their power, by closing down indus- 
tries and enforcing settlements of debts, to com- 
pel the people to take back the gains which have 
been exacted from them, and to give their pre- 
possessions — fixed properties and services — in 
exchange for them. 

Exaction and forced divestment may be de- 
fined as the denial to a people of a decent living 
by cheating them out of their earnings, then the 
denial to them of any living except as they are 
cheated out of their properties in exchange for 
their earnings. The season of compulsory di- 
vestment is attended with a series of ill-circum- 
stances which make it a season of greatest hard- 
ship to the people. Among the circumstances 
of extra hardship may be mentioned, first, the 
forcible dispossession of many person which en- 
tail sacrifices in the way of costs of official pro- 
ceedings, foreclosures, and low offers, that 
amount next to the outright robbery of persons 
because they have fallen victims to a dire and 
outrageous effect. 

Another circumstance is the extra taxation 



154 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION 

entailed to support the laborless and foodless, to 
build poor houses for the confirmed beggaring, 
and to build jails and penitentiaries, and to de- 
fray expense of machinery for intercepting, try- 
ing and incarcerating those who have gone into 
crime rather than into beggary to maintain 
that which mankind is so tenacious of, life. 

Another circumstance is that this period im- 
pinges stingingly upon the domain of the feelings, 
forming another reason why it is extraordinarily 
severe. To fail to take the emotions into account 
in calculating the sum of the causes of human 
happiness is to leave out the biggest half of the 
element. One who has not been thoroughly 
imbruted and calloused against shame by poverty 
and denial would rather live on bread and water 
than be forced to the acceptance of an alternative 
which savors of ignominy and loss of public 
esteem. The property holder who can sell his 
property in a semi-voluntary manner is relieved 
of the worst features of an inevitable performance. 
If he must sell, the avoidance of forced sale is 
also avoidance of violation of his self-respect and 
self-esteem. 

To the ordinary laborer nothing can be more 
afflictive and soul torturing than the necessity 
to go upon charity or to seek the poorhouse for 
an extension of stay upon mother earth. Many 
seek suicide first. Thousands, preferably to 



JNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 55 

humiliating themselves thus, resort to every trick 
and device, innocent or criminal, which can be 
invented or perfomed, to live well or poorly, as 
circumstances permit, and usually to find them- 
selves at last arraigned and convicted for mis- 
actions and compelled at last to march into the 
poorhouse, or perchance worse, the chain gang or 
prison pen. Humiliation overtakes them after 
all their efforts, to at least appear respectable 
when want of proper employment prevented 
them from acting respectably. It is the things of 
the nature here depicted, the embodiments and 
manifestations of the excess or culminating effects 
of unfair distribution which make the panic 
periods less endurable than the decades which 
precede them. 

ADVANTAGE SOUGHT. 

We may now inquire into the extent of the 
purpose and practice of the exactors to take the 
advantage. 

By a little examination we can satisfy our- 
selves that is their purpose and practice to take 
the whole advantage; that is, that it is their pur- 
pose to reduce the masses of the people to a state 
of non-freeholdness and servitude as rapidly as 
the methods employed will allow ; that they force 
those who are completely dependent upon them 
for support to maintain themselves upon a bare 



156 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. . 

subsistence; that it is their purpose to reduce as 
rapidly as possible the whole mass of people until 
the rank and file of them rest upon the base of 
lowest life support. 

Let me explain here that the lower rank and 
and file of industrians, the ordinary laborers, the 
commoner class of mechanics, merchants, agri- 
culturists and others professionally or otherwise 
engaged, will always have some to rank above 
them, because of innate differences in men and 
situations. Some will rank above to a certain 
degree, because of superiority of natural talent, 
luck or pre-disposed circumstances. Many 
things, evident to any one, intervene to preclude 
the indiscriminate precipitation of a whole body 
of people to exactly the same level. With the 
most phable class, the mere employe, it cannot 
be done. Corporations, for instance, are in need 
of skilled bosses and skilled workman, and higher 
wages must be paid to induce this skill, as skill 
manifestly would not be induced if it commanded 
no more reward than the commonest service. 
So when we talk of people being reduced to the 
lowest base of subsistence, we must remember 
that there will rank some above that base, be- 
cause they could not be pushed down to it^ 
without the others being pushed below it and to 
starvation and destruction. This the exactors 
would not find it to their interests to do since it is 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 157 

their business to subsist and luxuriate off the 
exertions of the masses. 

That it is the purpose and practice of the ex- 
actors to take the whole advantage, as outlined 
above, is, in the first place, inferable from the 
nature of the instrumentality of monopoly. Upon 
an inquiry into the nature of a monopoly, we find 
that it confers absolute power. The monopoly 
of any business or industry means sole control 
over that business or industry. Sole control 
means power to compel all persons in need of 
such services, wages or commodities as are con- 
trolled, to deal with him who controls them, sub- 
ject to this one's self-proposed terms. Thus we 
see, as to anything monopolized, he who monop- 
olizes it is bound by no social law superior to 
his own caprice. In any business connected with 
the supply of wants he is enabled to disre- 
gard, if he wish, all the legitimate rules of trade 
and laws of prices, and, to the extent to which 
the people are bound to deal with him, to capri- 
ciously override their rights and interests. 

Now, incidental circumstances having brought 
one into the possession of a monopol}', the con- 
scientiousness of such an individual might deter 
him from abusing his privilege; the preponder- 
ance of chances, however, are, that he would 
make the most of his opportunity. In those in- 
stances, however, in which monopolies have 



158 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

been the consummation of persistent and perti- 
nacious seeking, scheming and building up of 
self as opposed to ruin of competitors — a con- 
summation characteristic of the few great mon- 
opolies which we have in this country — there is 
no doubt as to the course those who control them 
will take; the inference is patent that they will 
use them not only to their advantage, but to 
their greatest advantage. 

This conclusion we are justified in forming, 
from our universal instruction that means and 
ends always are, or are designed to be, commen- 
surate or in unison one with the other. The 
question is intuitively intruded : " If not for sole 
advantage, why sole opportunity?" It would be 
contrary to our modes of thinking, as superin- 
duced by common observation and experience, 
to suppose that men who will work and scheme 
to get sole control, and complete authority to 
coerce, will do other than dictate the most self- 
seeking terms consistent with the power of 
others to yield. 

The inferences are backed by facts. Unqual- 
ified proof of the disposition to take every advan- 
tage is given in the extreme contrasts existing 
between the monopolists and those whom they 
have got completely under their control, like 
the employes directly and necessarily dependent 
upon them for a living* 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 59 

The exactors we find in ownership of great 
railroad interests, mining interests, manutacturing 
and other interests which they have consolidated 
to prevent the independent and competitive 
management of separate concerns. These, we 
must mind, constitute a basis of wealth and are 
the indications of a series of profits remarkable 
alike for their mammothness, speed of accu- 
mulation, and recentness of origin. The personal 
livings and modes of living of these giants of 
wealth are in keeping with their circumstances. 
They live in costly mansions adorned with the 
most extravagant embellishments, genius and 
dexterity can fashion. These are complemented 
with furnishings which have taxed for their pro- 
curement the labor and skill of the most finished 
artists for months and for years. At the behests 
of the occupants of these mansions the world is 
ransacked to get suitable attire and ornament 
for their persons and suitable food and drink to 
tickle their palates. Experts study how to ad- 
minister to their wants and retinues of servants 
anticipate their every desire. They convey 
themselves in the most costly transports, luxuriate 
in expensive summer villas and go sight seeing 
to resorts of attraction in every approachable 
part of the globe. What one such a family 
spends for pleasure above personal comforts alone, 
would keep a thousand families of the opposite 



l6o UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

extreme in what would be considered by them 
plenty and affluence. 

What is the condition of that class of persons 
who sustain the relation to this opulent class of 
dependents upon them for the sustenance of life ? 
I have reference to the wage-workers employed 
in their mines, their shops, their factories and 
elsewhere, the body and bulk of whom comprise 
the base of the fabric of human toil and upon 
which certain grades rest that necessitate 
higher pay. Do not say that, living in a 
free country, this class of persons are pri- 
vileged to go elsewhere and improve their 
situations. It is crowning infamy with insult to 
first encompass certain industries which labor 
must seek to get its supply absorbed, and then 
say the wage workers are privileged to seek em- 
ployment where they like. Just as the people are 
compelled to patronize these industries, because 
they are essential to the people's existence, and as 
much so after as before they are monopolized, so 
laborers are compelled to seek employment at 
them, because they are a part of the operations 
which take up the labor of the country; in other 
words, laborers are pushed into them, whether 
willing or not, because other employments exclude 
after they have absorbed a supply of labor pro- 
portioned to the share or ratio of subsistence 
they must supply. The laborers of monopolists 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. l6l 

must, of necessity, work for them. In what con- 
dition then, I repeat, do we find the laborers of 
the great monopohsts, of those individuals whose 
fortunes are so vast, for whose gratification and 
amusement money flows as water from beneath 
the rock.^ It is not necessary to dilate. Their 
condition is well known the world over, and can 
be summed up in a sentence. It is that of a poor, 
rent-racked,over- worked, poorl3^-habited, stomach- 
pinched people, working every day that they get 
means enough to keep soul and body together 
and destined to live upon charity when the work 
plays out. When they luxuriate, it is in the na- 
ture of half-sunday saunterings around the scenes 
of their labor and visits to grogshops, because 
poverty does not close the heart to enjoyment 
and no other means of enjoyment can they aftbrd. 
When they transport themselves, it is on a hunt 
for a job, with danger of being jailed for a tramp 
on the way, and when they rest it is enforced 
idleness, because so much has been produced that 
no more is needed. 

What do we get from this immense and rap- 
idly developed contrast between the conditions 
of the monopolists and their hired laborers, but 
thorough support of the declaration that it is the 
permanent purpose of the monopolists, and 
practice where possible, to take the whole advan- 
tage of the people. When we contrast their 



1 62 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

immense wealth and rapid accretions with the 
miserable and denied condition of their employ 
es, and have blazoned the disparity of their 
ability to remunerate with the actuality of their 
remuneration, we get no grounds for assuming 
that profits enter as an element in the considera- 
tion or fixing of wages. We get no grounds 
for any inference other than that it is their pur- 
pose and policy in all their dealings with others 
to fix forced compensations and terms in favor 
of themselves, and that to the utmost degree 
and extent. 

If any one denies that their purpose and 
practice is as here set forth, then I ask, how 
much lower could the wages of the common 
class of laborers — ^the class of essentially lowest 
limit, be reduced and wholesale starvation, 
barring perpetual charity, be averted ! What 
signifies the aggrandized condition and constant 
and rapid accretions of the monopolists every- 
where, in contrast with and related to the thor- 
oughly impoverished condition of their employes, 
if it does not signify gain - getting for the 
monopolists down to the exact verge of the 
delivering victims' stintedest support. 

The exactors are pressing this principle of 
greed as hard against the property-holding mid- 
dle classes as they are against their immediate 
dependents. The manifestations among the 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 63 

middle-classes are not the same as among the 
dependent employes, but that is because they 
are not designed so to be. The monopolists 
want to rapidly divest the people of their pro- 
perties. That is how they apply the principle of 
sole advantage as against the middle classes. 
The requisite for rapid divestment is large gains. 
To get this two things are essential: lively pro- 
duction by the party to be divested ; the surrender 
by him of all that can be spared above what must 
be had for a frugal subsistence and the lively 
production of more. As the leaving enough for a 
frugal subsistence and the lively production of 
more would not go with absolute stintedness, we 
would fail if we looked for extreme stintedness 
and self-denial among the common property- 
holding class to get proof that the monopohsts 
were taking the greatest advantage possible of 
the people. As again, we find that the majority 
of people among the middle classes save out of 
their earnings nothing more than a frugal living, 
this fact, taken in conjunction with the many 
other facts we have portra3'^ed, prove that the 
exactors are appropriating the properties of the 
common people, by actual or mortgage title, as 
fast as the instrumentalities employed will allow. 
I think now, from the . considerations in this 
chapter presented, the fair minded should be 
satisfied of these facts: 



164 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

That unfair distribution, through monopoly of 
businesses and industries, is a method of commerce 
in which one class is compelled to deal with 
another and to give that other all the advantages 
there are in the bargains. 

That the result must be total and most expe- 
ditious divestment of the one class for the ag- 
grandizement of another class. 

That industrial and trade exaction, hard of 
itself to bear is but the prelude and pathway to 
the harshest exaction the human kind can subsist 
under, or even harsher than they can survive. 

That those who occupy the position between 
the exactors and their lower class dependents, the 
middle class so called, entertain delusive ideas if 
they think they are benefitted b}' detentions from 
lower class earnings, or if they imagine they are 
not destined to be subjected to a like system of 
detention. 

That if the earth were ten times asfruitful as 
it is, and the productiveness of human eflbrt were 
ten times as great as seen to be, existing regula- 
tions would cause want to stalk forth no less 
really, pervadingly and inflictively than now. 

That it is a horrible and shameful fact, yet 
true, that the demon of want-death and starvation 
can reap victims with as great facility in the land 
of plenty and wealth-teeming cities as he can in 
the land of barbarianism, barrenness and famine. 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 65 

Finally, that unfair distribution is an evil cause 
which can generate nothing but a train of evil 
effects, the finality of which would be the destruc- 
tion of the mass of mankind, did not revolution 
or break-up always intervene to change the course 
of things and save the people, not from the evils 
of exaction, but from the most disastrous conse- 
quences of exaction. 



CHAPTER VI. 



WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS. 

It IS not uncommon to hear and read wails 
upon the non-pacific virtues of modern civiHza- 
tion and upon the imperceptibihty of the ad- 
vance of our ideas beyond the war spirit, as il 
the predisposing cause had been removed or in 
any way molHfied, as if there were not exaction 
and aggressiveness, and they as rampant, ra- 
pacious and intolerable in character now as they 
ever were during any previous period of history* 
Just as if our advance in political and social 
affairs has not been uniformly an advance in the 
refinements of exaction instead of advance in 
freedom from exaction. All this is so plain that 
he who runs may read if he but discard his trav- 
sty glasses and look with the naked eye. 

Exaction and aggression have changed forms 
and adopted new guises and methods, but that 
there is less of either or an abatement of the 
evils growing out of either, it devolves upon 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 67 

him who so asserts to prove. To my mind the 
contrary is so apparent as to need no argument 
to estabHsh it, and none for that purpose will be 
here employed. 

Civilization has advanced us in certain direc- 
tions. Besides advancing us in other things, it 
has refined us in the art of exacting ; it has also 
refined us in the arts of war. We do not carry 
ofif people's goods bodily, as was done in olden 
times, or as is done amonguncivilized peoples at 
the present day; neither do we surprise and mas 
sacre people in order to get their goods. We do 
not now exact through chattel slavery as we did 
in recent-past times, neither do we invade, over- 
power and carry ofF people into chattel slavery. 
We have *' improved." We have a more 
''civilized " way of doing such things. We exact 
by monopoly, taxation and debt-building, and we 
" declare" war, and conduct it with reference to 
certain formalities which civilization recognizes 
and compels compliance with. This is acts and 
deeds same in substance, but different in the modes 
of performance. It is inglorious murdererand 
vile plunderer becomerespectable b}^ donning the 
soubriquet of valorous warrior and smart financier. 
That is as much as we can credit to civilization 
in these regards. We exact and reduce the 
masses of the people to want and beggary, just as 
certainly as did our less civilized projenitors, and 



1 68 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

on account thereof, we have wars and kill and 
destroy just as inevitably as did they. The two 
are not separable. As long as nations are to 
be run bv class exactors, and in the interest of 
class exactors, so long will there be wars for the 
very reason that class exaction makes wars ex- 
pedient or desirable from several different stand- 
points, as we may show. 

War is advocated from the standpoint of bet- 
terment of times, from the speculative, which is 
the exactor's standpoint and from the standpoint 
of revolt. That is, amongst the masses war is 
advocated as a panacea for industrial depression, 
hard times and the general ills of over-production. 
Exactors frequently abet and encourage and plan 
wars for sake of self-enrichment. People are 
driven to war in resistance to exactions that have 
become intolerable. In each case we see that 
exaction has been behind the war, and therefore, 
that the influence of civilization must be to 
suspend exaction before wars can be suspended. 
Let us notice further each case in turn. 

STANDPOINT OF HARD TIMES REFORM. 

It is not uncommon to hear the oppressed 
victims of exaction advocating war as a panacea 
for the ills of over-production. They reason that 
war creates demand and activity, and that it is 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 69 

better to have demand and activity with war 
than to liave over-supply and inactivity in 
peace ; therefor^ war. We must suppose of 
course that such persons see no further ahead than 
to the end of iirst results. They evidently be- 
lieve that surpluses accrue in some mj^sterious and 
uncontrollable way, and that wars annihilate them 
in such manner as to leave no emanation of their 
forming to work future harm. They hardly 
reason that the extinguishment of surpluses in 
war is but the quick and costly metamorphosis of 
them into prepossessions, principally in form of 
public debt lien, and they hardly reason that the 
debt being an added factor of exaction, adds to 
the frequency and severity of the periods of in- 
dustrial depression and hard times. We must 
suppose that they see the advantages of the ac- 
tivities and demands born of war, and that they no 
further see, or else we could not conceive why 
they should covet war. 

That a preponderance of good feeling and 
satisfaction should be reconcilable with the ex- 
istence and maintenance of a burdensome, de- 
structive and heart-rending war, so much so as 
to make it wished for by many, appears odd, yet 
it is so reconcilable, upon the theory that a less 
evil is more endurable than a greater one. The 
fancy or eagerness for war, when industrial de- 
pression is harrying a people, results from the 



170 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

menacing and ruining character of productions 
when once they have been absorbed away from 
the masses and placed at the sole disposition of a 
few merciless exactors. People would engage in 
wide- wasting, burdensome and murderous war 
for the dissipation of them, rather than go through 
the alternative ot forced sale or mortage making, 
forced begging and forced stealing. 

Rather than impair their home possessions the 
people would toil and produce and contribute to 
keep men engaged in carnage and destruction; 
rather than suffer the ignomin}^, contumely and 
disgrace attached to pauperism, trampism and 
prisonism, they would march foot sore through 
shuddering rains and burning sunshine and stand 
as a wall before destructive shells and bullets. 
Between the two alternatives, both unwelcome, 
war is preferred. That is the secret of the desire 
on the part of one large class for war. As the 
sentiment is born of the consequences of exaction, 
so the war spirit from this source must be laid to 
the door of exaction. 

exactors' standpoint. 

Motives of different sort impel the exactors 
into wanting war. War is money to them. Just 
as the victims of exaction want war, because they 
think it causes the quick and everlasting anni- 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 17I 

hilation of surpluses, so the exactors want war, 
because they know it causes the quick conversion 
of their surphises upon fancy terms for them. 

In the earher and richer days of a common 
people intestine wars are the most popular with 
exactors. Wars of outside conquest are the most 
popular with them when they have got their 
home people well impoverished. To use the 
present case : the national polic}" of the United 
States is not one which meditates aggression upon 
outsiders. Our country is too new for that yet. 
The field for exaction is too good an one at home 
for exactors to think 3^et of trying their hands 
upon the subjects of other, countries. There is 
too large a class here who have not yet been re- 
duced to the lowest stage of subsistence ; too 
many who are still good subjects for plucking for 
exactors to think yet of casting their eyes abroad. 
Besides, an immense amount of land remains yet 
to be settled upon and made productive of rents, 
interest and profit to exactors. In short, the gen- 
eral industrial class of the Union has not been 
reduced to any thing like the stringent condition 
which makes aggressive warfare more profitable 
than present methods of home exaction, and until 
they have been so reduced our policy will be one 
of peace with outsiders. 

It cannot be said that we will try extremely 
hard to keep peace within. Home wars in thrifty 



172 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 



countries are easy of ignition. Exactors abet 
and encourage them instead of throw their in- 
fluence against them. They have, occasion 
justifying, looked the case over. They see that 
the people can yield up much more than they are 
yielding. A large portion of them are not only 
doing well but are growing richer. They can 
stand greatly increased taxation. So when threat- 
ening appears, the war spirit is encouraged. If 
there can be war, gain-getting will be accelerated. 
The exactors will profit from the increased sur- 
plusages which increased activity gives; from the 
disposal of their surpluses at fancy prices; by the 
advancement of goverment funds upon speculat- 
ing terms; and by the opportunity which their ad- 
vantages gives them to run financial measures in 
their own interests. This is a good thing for the 
exactors, so long as the people are thrifty enough 
to bear the extra loading, and they encourage 
wars at home. 

When the people have been loaded with all 
they can stand up under, then the exactors throw 
their influence against intestine wars. They 
preach against internal dissentions, refuse to 
invest in credits for such purposes, and force the 
authorities to resort to peaceful modes of 
settling their grievances. 

After this there obtains the aggressive policy 
with regard to weaker nations. Our own country 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. I73 

can be expected to become an aggressive one 
when our own people have been got well yoked 
and yielding. Aggressive wars are for the ex. 
tension of exacting devices abroad, when they 
cannot be further extended or amplified at home. 
A modern method of procedure is to fix upon a 
prosperous, but unwarlike or inadequately strong 
country, trade and tamper with the inhabitants 
until a pretext arises for war, when they can be 
subjugated and reduced to the same condition that 
prevails among the masses of the subjugating 
country. 

The vigorous or lax prosecution of a war de- 
pends upon the good or poor degree of chance 
there is to make some set of subjects foot the 
cost. Where thrifty masses can be found to 
saddle a debt upon, there will always be vigorous 
wars. It will be so, because the exactors will find 
it to their interests to see that plenty of means 
are advanced to furnish plenty of men, plenty of 
rations, plenty of pa}^, plenty of weapons, plenty 
of munitions and plenty of everything which go 
to make good regiments and good fighting. The 
adage that "money makes the mare go," applies 
in soldiery and war as in everything else. It is 
only in cases where the exactors see no chance to 
make somebody else pay the bill, that wars are 
conducted in a half-hearted and irresolute manner. 
England's war in the Soudan is an example. 



174 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 



There was no chance for the exactors to get any- 
thing ont of the Soudanese if they conquered 
them, and no chance to saddle the debt of a vig- 
orous war upon their home subjects, since the 
latter are burdened with all the debt they can 
now pay interest upon. Hence the poor figure 
cut in the Soudan. 

The same irresoluteness characterizes Eng- 
land's resistance to the forces menacing her 
Asiatic possessions. There the exactors have 
nothing to gain but merely to save. They are 
making all off the subjects of India now, that the 
subjects can yield. To save the country gives 
no chance of profit and spare chance for an even 
return. Therefore, India is to be saved, if saved, 
at the expense of the honor and dignity of the 
mother land. England, so skilled and powerful 
in the art of war as to be able to conquer almost 
any nation that would make good plucking for 
her exactors, is like an imbecile old crone when 
it comes to warring with nothing to pluck in 
sight. 

We thus see, that from the exactors* standpoint, 
there will always be wars while the principle of 
exaction maintains in the government of countries, 
because there will always be occasions when the 
exactors will find it to their interests to have 
wars. 

A lesson to be learned here, is one in regard to 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 75 

the decline and fall of nations. When a country's 
masses have been loaded to full yielding capacity 
with exacting devices, the nation has arrived at 
the cr3^stal state when it readily succumbs to the 
blows of extraneous forces. And this circum- 
stance is not blamable nearly so much to the de- 
generacy of the masses, as it is to the ava- 
riciousness of the exactors. The latter will not 
contribute of their own in patriotic defense. 
Rather than yield up any share they possess for 
the perpetuation of existing government, they will 
risk the chances of preserving their gains and 
continuing exactors under an altered rule. 

STANDPOINT OF REVOLT. 

Revolt against the intolerableness of exaction 
is the occasion of wars. 

People do not revolt against moderate exac- 
tion. It would be right to do so but they do not. 
History proves that the exactors have been 
royally sustained in the business of exaction, as 
long as they have observed a decent regard for 
people's bare stomachs, bare bodies, and bare 
lives. The latter have always peacably permitted 
themselves to be deprived of the betterments of 
life which they were entitled to. But naked- 
ness and starvation has frequently stirred them 
to revolt, causing them to ^ain nothingf some- 



176 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

times, concessions at other times, and at still 
other times, occasioning them to succeed in 
freeing themselves entirely from their oppres- 
sors. 

It may be remarked, however, that when a 
people have freed themselves from the domin- 
ion of their oppressors, their advantage has beea 
only temporary. For they have always imme- 
diately set about to build up, and to allow the 
building up, of a new system of exaction to take 
the place of the old S3'stems. 

We see now that exaction, as a primary cause, 
leads to wars, first, from the standpoint of re- 
lief from the consequences of exaction, as where 
people advocate war for the sake of relief from 
industrial depression and hardtimes. This 
sort of relief we have explained is a little present 
gain at the expense of impulse in the divestment 
of the people, the frequency of panics and bitter- 
ness of them. 

Secondly, exaction leads to war for the furth- 
erance of exaction, the exactors encouraging war 
for the profit there is in the business to them- 
selves. Looked at as an instrumentality well 
calculated to accelerate the aggregation of the 
world's wealth in their own hands it is a good 
thing for them. In reality, however, it is not a 
good thing for them, since stolen gains benefit 
nobody, and are a curse to everybody. 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 77 

Exaction, in the third place, leads to war by 
impelling to revolt against it when it exceeds 
common endurance. Warlike revolt of a people 
for the purpose of ridding themselves of the do- 
minion and encroachments of exaction, is an 
exercise of pure patriotism. A war of defense 
against invaders intent upon exacting would be 
of the same kind. Except for these purposes, I 
do not see that any resort to war could be char- 
acterized as an exercise of patriotism. Liberty 
bought of war, and lost again through failure to 
provide against the rise of new exactors, I must 
claim, however, is making the resort to war 
a thing of vainness and folly. 

Aside from the three motives based upon 
exaction here given, I do not see any that would 
provoke war. I am convinced, therefore, that 
without exaction war would be a relic. Motives 
of relief would be absent, because no oppression. 
Motives of gain would be absent, because all 
would have to bear alike the burdens of war, and 
each individual would have to submit to a dead 
loss of time, service and wealth. Evidently war 
which produced such results would not be en- 
gaged in, unless it were a case of resistance of 
non-exactors, against the invasions of those per- 
petuating their exacting devices and bent upon 
further exaction. 



178 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 



FINANCE OF WAR. 



It may not be inappropriate here to touch upon 
the question of money needs of war. 

A free people would be expected to provide 
funds for the carrying on of war, against invading 
exactors, say, mainly by direct taxation. We 
premise, first, that the absence of exaction would 
be brought about by fair taxation. Fair tax- 
ation would cause each to contribute, in a certain 
proportion based upon wealth, for the prosecution 
of the war. It would also cause each to con- 
tribute in the same proportion for the payment 
of a war debt. Under such dispensation a large 
war debt could not be created unless the govern- 
ment remunerated each tax-payer with bonds 
equalling the amount of taxes he paid. But as 
to tax the people afterward to pay for these bonds 
would be to ask each person to pay for his own 
bond, we can readily see that the inhabitants 
would prefer to dispense with the issuing of 
bonds. Bonds would be issued to those who 
could spare more means to aid the government 
than their proportionate share of taxation called 
for, the same being attracted by the offer of the 
government to exchange its bonds, running on 
time and bearing interest, tor those means. The 
amount obtained in that way, however, would 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 179 

not suffice for the creation of a very large debt, 
since fair taxation would not leave much that 
desired such investment. 

A war we can conceive would be very unpop- 
ular under a fair system of taxation, for no 
people could see any advantage in having to give 
away their earnings for the support of soldiers, 
without any chance of ever getting anything in 
return for their earnings. It would be excessive 
taxation and consumption of means, with nothing 
but a hole in their resources to show for it. A 
free and fair dealing people would never have 
recourse to war except for patriotic defense. 
Such people, too, would be very difficult of sub- 
jugation. 

Would more money be required by a free 
people in war than in peace .^^ In my opinion no 
more would be needed. Under a S3^stem in 
which no surpluses were built up, in which all 
were rewarded according to their earnings, and 
all earnings were required to reward all; in which 
the wants of all were free to amplify, and con- 
sumption was limited only by the power to pro- 
duce, the activity of the people would always 
be at high tide* 

Consumption and production, or demand and 
supply being equal, the conditions would not be 
better for evolving activity. It is a question 
whether as much money would be needed, the 



l8o UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

increased activity of production being over-bal- 
anced by the number diverted away from pro- 
duction. 

REGULATING THE CURRENCY. 

I append a few remarks under this head. The 
best plan of regulating the volume of currency, I 
think, is yet to be discovered. But the lack of 
best plan of managing the currency is not the 
thing that is hurting us now. The great hurt 
consists in the oretting out of the hands of earners 
into the hands of the non-earners the money that 
is. When we have a system of fair distribution 
of earnings, as induced by free competition, the 
money will settle where it belongs, and there will 
be no complaints to make. 

My belief is that the best plan of present pro- 
posing for the regulation of the volume of cur- 
rency is through a system of purchase and sale 
of bonds. 

We can first premise that the government will 
always be in need of money, not only for routine 
expense but for extraordinary purposes, as harbor 
and river improvements, public buildings and 
probably the conduct of wars. 

We will premise next that the government 
holds itself in readiness at all times to buy bonds 
or to sell bonds, as the occasion requires, the same 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. l8l 

bearing an annual rate of interest equal, as near 
as can be found out, to the average national and 
natural annual increase of wealth. To satisfy its 
money needs then, the government, if it owe for 
bonds, will pursue one course, if it owe for no 
bonds, will pursue another course. 

Now, when people held bonds against the 
government, the indication would be that the 
money in circulation sufficed to answer the de- 
mands of commerce. The money paid better 
in bonds than in business. Taxation, therefore, 
should be resorted to, to obtain the means needed 
to meet governmental expense. 

But should there be no bonds in the hands of 
the people against the government, the indica- 
tion would be that money was insufficient for 
trade. The bonds had been converted into 
money, because more could be made through 
use of it in business than by investment of it in 
bonds. In this case the duty would be to issue 
money to meet government expense, and to keep 
on issuing until bonds were sought when issue 
should stop and taxation begin. The taxation 
should be kept up, and no new issue made 
so long as any bonds were held against the gov- 
ernment. 

The underlying principles of this plan and that 
of the national banking plan are the same, though 
there are some incidents joined with the national 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 82 

banking plan that are not to be approved. The 
bonds delivered by the national banks to the gov- 
ernment should be looked upon as consideration 
for circulation warranting their cancellation. The 
banks would not then draw double interest upon 
one capital, and the government would still sustain 
the same relationship to these banks that it does 
now. To cancel the bonds would not affect the 
rate of interest the banks would charge, since it 
is their rule to charge whatever they can get. If 
you argue that more are tempted into the bank- 
ing business, the answer is, that double interest 
tends to abnormal increase of circulation. Mone}', 
to be kept even in supply with the need of it, 
should be rendered no more remunerative in 
loans than in trade. 

The plan under discussion does not meditate 
the issue of circulation to those intent upon 
the banking business alone. It would issue 
money at any time bondholders preferred to ex- 
change their bonds for money at par, and with- 
out question of what use was to be made of the 
money. 

These remarks apply, of course, only to the 
nominal amount of bonds that would play the 
part of regulation of currency volume. While 
we have a large public debt, .as now, no bonds 
would begin to play that role until bonds came 
to par and sought conversion faster than they 



1 8^ UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

were due. Whenever the holders of our large 
public debt preferred the money at par for their 
bonds to the bonds themselves at a natural rate 
of interest, then it would be safe to issue money 
in exchange for them, or for so many as would 
seek conversion. When they did not seek such 
conversion, the evidence would be that their 
worth paid better in bonds than in trade, and 
that they should be paid off by taxation as fast 
as they became due. 

Government paper issues of money are not 
available for settlement of balances with foreign 
nations, for the reason that the reigning spirit of 
exaction renders governments unstable, which 
character is transmitted to their guarantees. 
The nations of the world are engaged in the 
work of ruining one another and in ruining them- 
selves. A horoscope cannot be cast, therefore, 
in one decade of the situation of nations in an- 
other decade. Possibl}^ the nation that confi- 
dentl}^ guarantees its series of legal tenders in 
one period, will, in another period, find its pre- 
rogatives set aside for that of an invader, or 
through or in consequence of the machinations 
of exactors within. Therefore, for use in trade 
with foreign nations, a commodity having an in- 
trinsic value, as gold and silver, becomes a 
necessity. Gold and silver are needed in bulk 
for the settlement of balances with nations: but 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 84 

still, to tit them for use in the smaller transactions 
within a nation, they need to be divided into 
pieces of given weight, size and purity, and 
stamped, each piece with an expressed value ap- 
proaching as near as possible to its intrinsic 
value. 

When a system of fair distribution will have 
become supreme the world over, and govern- 
ments rendered thereby everlasting, a guaranteed 
paper circulation of one nation will be good 
for its expressed value in any other nation, for 
any purpose it was the function for money to 
serve. 



CHAPTER VII. 



WASTE ON HUMAN CAPABILITIES. 

Among the conditions that must exist to 
evoke the fruitfuUest exercise of the God-given 
powers of man are these : 

1 . The greatest freedom in choice of methods. 

2 . The closest interest in the fruits of employ- 
ment. 

Tliese conditions are the intimate attributes 
of ownership. They are not supported so 
closely by any other relation of man to proper- 
ty. Ownership is essential to the first condition 
because there cannot be exemption from inter- 
ference without complete control, and complete 
control is incompatible with any other relation. 
A man exercises his own will in regard to such 
property only as he owns, so that it is ownership 
alone that gives man liberty to perform in his 
own way. Ownership of capital is essential to 
the second condition because that provision 
alone gives the performer the right to the fruits 



l86 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

of his performance and creates the highest in- 
terest of all interests namely, the interest of pos- 
session. Any advantage which a people derive 
from the existence of either of these conditions, 
then, they will be able to credit to ownership, 
because ownership must precede these condi- 
tions. These requisite conditions are laid down 
with a view of showing, by a discussion of their 
merits, how unfair distribution^ by the creation 
of opposite conditions, causes a waste of human 
capabilities. 

We can see that people are benefitted most 
where provision is made for the highest possi- 
ble freedom of choice of methods, the first at- 
tribute of ownership, because they then profit 
from the exercise and application of the infinite 
variety of resources found in the different mem- 
bers of their number. 

Men's talents, we know, are as varied as the 
faces of men. These differences were designed 
to enable us to perceive and lay hold upon the 
diversified forces of nature. If it were not so, 
and our minds were all precisely like some one 
man's mind, we could pursue only an one straight 
course adapted to the comprehension of that 
single mind, and would lose all other of nature's 
helps, because we did not understand them. 
Happily, the author of our beings has seen fit to 
furnish us with perceptions as varied as the nat- 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 87 

ural objects it was designed we should study 
and solve the intricacies of. One person is fitted 
to excel in one thing, another person in another 
thing. A useful idea that would not dawn upon a 
certain man's brain In a life-time is perceived by 
another in an Instant. The devising often men 
will readily dissolve difficulties that would Im- 
pede one man always, because his devising 
capacity was limited to the grasp of a single 
mind. In any piece of planning two heads are 
better than one, and, in the same line, the freest 
exercise of universal talent will the soonest 
bring about the complete mastery of man over 
the forces of nature. To provide that condition, 
then, which liberates to the largest extent the 
countless capacities of man, mental and physi- 
cal, is to provide for the most rapid development 
of the human race. 

By the interest of possession in the fruits of 
toil, the second condition resulting from capital 
ownership, the people profit by the inducement 
of that prudence of management, saving, watch- 
fulness, care and modification of methods to suit 
peculiar cases which a man extends to any pursuit 
in which his reward depends upon the yield he 
can produce by his industry and care. The fruits 
of his labor being his own, he is interested in 
getting the largest return possible, and he will? 
from the very nature of things, create a much 



1 88 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

greater return than can be hoped for from one 
who looks for compensation in salary or wages 
only. 

Seeing then that ownership calls for the wisest 
exertions and best devising expedients in man we 
become thorougly convinced that the productive 
appliances of a people will be perfected in the 
most effective way, by keeping in vogue a system 
which invokes to the highest extent the facilities 
for obtain ment by men of proprietary interests in 
their vocations. 

But we have said that unfair distribution causes 
a waste of human capabilities. How? By con- 
version into few hands of extravagant possessory 
interests, thus reducing the proprietary class to 
the minimum number. By creating a small class 
of millionaire owners on the one hand, and a large 
class oi propertjdess employes on the other, both 
of whom have their efficienciesimpaired by the 
obstructions attending their situations. 

First, the owners of immense establishments 
can give only general and skipping attention to 
the details of affairs, leaving the real management 
and performances of their businesses to others, 
under their employ. This is operating second 
handed, which is a very disadvantageous mode. 
It is impossible to get men to take the same con- 
cern in the welfai*e of others' interests that they 
will take in their own. The very natures of men 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 89 

forbid the practice of the minutest productive 
econom}^ when the fruits of toil do not become 
their own, and as the owners of immense estab- 
Hshments cannot themselves give attention to 
all of the innumerable details, or in many cases to 
any of the details, upon which the fruitfulness of 
operations depend, there follows inevitable waste 
and loss. The losses occasioned by want of 
strictest care here, and the allowance of a small 
waste there, and the failure to create to the utmost 
capacity every where, things that would be pre- 
vented by a proprietor having a smaller concern' 
over which he could give completer supervision, 
go to make up an immense aggregate to be de- 
ducted from what might be the real produce of 
employed labor and capital. 

While proprietors of vast concerns cannot fa- 
miliaTize themselves with their businesses suf- 
ficiently well to fit them to formulate the best 
plans for the general, and specifically the depart- 
mental, conduct of them, still by virtue of their 
authority as owners, all orders must emanate from 
them. Those under them, therefore, have no 
higher powers than that of executives and ser- 
vants. The superintendents and men in emplo}- 
have authority to execute only such plans as are 
furnished to them ready made. They are 
without power to adopt the better methods which 
their g^reater familiarity with the businesses in 



190 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

hand and practice would enable them to prescribe. 
From this ensues more waste — a waste of the 
superior knowledge and skill which the super- 
intendent and others obtain from close contact and 
intimate experience with the businesses in hand, 
and from constant observation of the phenomena, 
rules, causes and effects connective th*erewith. 
Though they may be animated by a concientious 
desire to expend their knowledge and skill for 
the best interests of their employers, yet are they 
bound by master's rules and subjected to the con- 
servatism, and opposition to new methods, which 
characterize the masters as a class. It is well- 
known that useful inventions and improvements 
seldom emanate from large capitalists, and that it 
requires the most strenuous efforts by the authors 
of the best appliances to get them generally 
adopted. The direct managers are the quickest 
to discover the advantages in improvements and 
the defects in existing things, but being without 
the power which ownership confers, that is the 
power to enforce the adoption or discharge of 
measures and appliances according as they see 
that they will beneficially or do injuriously effect 
the concerns in charge, they are often compelled 
to carry out modes and policies which their better 
grounded judgments plainly tell them are far 
from being the best that could be employed. 
This superiority of ability to control, direct and 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. I9I 

adopt becomes so much wasted, so much of 
diversified and practical talent shut off from 
utilization in progress, improvement and cheap- 
ening of production. 

Again, self-interest constructs policies to suit 
the situations of men. It is policy for the super- 
intendent to preserve the good esteem of the 
proprietor who engages him, as likewise it is 
policy to maintain the good will of the men over 
whom he exercises control. Good will between 
the men and superintendent fills the proprietor 
with an exalted idea of the superintendent's fit- 
ness for the position he occupies. This high idea 
protects the superintendent in the enjoyment of 
his position and salary, the things of ruling mo- 
ment to him. But the good relationship between 
superintendent and men may depend upon a 
series of favoritisms toward the latter which is 
anything but to the interests of the proprietor. 

Again, the superintendent may find it to his ad- 
vantage to flatter his master upon the latter's exer- 
cise of sound judgment where there has been plainly 
unsoundness of judgment, and refrain from speak- 
ing the blunt truth in the matter. By so doing 
he attaches himself more firmly to the good will 
of a vain employer and profits thereby; and 
while it is certain such conduct is not for the 
best interests of the employer, it serves to pro- 
mote the interests of the superintendent; it an- 



192 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 



swers his needs, and is but an exhibition of a 
natural motive. 

Without multiplying examples, I think I have 
shown that that of a superintendent's authorit}', 
privileges and interest being foreign to those of a 
proprietor's, he lacks the proprietor's opportuni- 
ties for the exercise of that knowledge and ac- 
quired skill, and he lacks the proprietor's incen- 
tives for the exercise of that prudence, saving, 
care and attention to details which are so enrich- 
ing, when exercised, in results. In these facts 
are found objections to the aggregation of indus- 
tries into immense wholes in ownership of a few. 

Extending to the common workmen our in- 
quiries, we still fail to find good in a system 
which increases beyond necessit}^ the list of 
people deprived of all the interests and incentives 
which give inspiration and ambition to owners. 
We are only multiplying those who are interested 
rather in saving their strength and muscle than 
in putting forth extra exertions in the creation 
of supply. 

Coupled with the drawbacks of restraint and 
dis-interest are the inefficiencies resulting from 
weakness of mind and body. The meagre wages 
which the monopolists can compel men to ac- 
cept shuts them off from schools, churches and 
all the means of enlightenment of mind. It is 
not necessary to dwell upon the inferiority to the 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. IQ3 

educated, of the ignorant and dense-minded, as 
producers and earners. Statistics, observation 
and common sense satisfy us on that point. As 
to physical worth, the deprivations of body which 
under-paid employes are made to endure from 
lack of nutritious food, warm clothing, comforta- 
ble houses, and the overwork they are subjected 
to, are so health -destroying as to render it uncom- 
mon to find a perfectly robust person of middle 
age among them. Producing inefficiency in such 
men it needs no argument to establish. It is 
only necessary to say that these are some more 
of the crippling agencies born of monopolies, and 
that they greatly increase the cost of produc- 
tion; so much so that the monopolies could not be 
made self-sustaining if the destruction of compe- 
tition did not give them license to rob the public 
indefinitely. 

The common belief is that the more capital 
there is engaged in a single industry, the cheaper 
the production in that industry. But there is 
error in this. The influx of capital into an in- 
dustr}^ acts as a cheapener, until the amount of 
sufficiency is reached; further, it acts to the con- 
trary. Adequacy of capital, to the degree that 
it gives into an enterprise the best form of buil- 
dings, the most adaptible machinery and tools, 
and operating fund to correspond, is essential to< 
cheap production. But where there is enough.^ 



194 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 



efficiency is marred by the addition of more. 
The manufacture of a supply of anything being 
divided among a number of independent manu- 
facturers, possessed each with all the modern fa- 
cilities for doing his work, the wares will be 
turned out upon the lowest basis of cost. Because 
there will be a large number of interested pro- 
prietors engaged in directl}* overseeing and care- 
fully watching every detail in order to secure the 
greatest economy in the production of their arti- 
cles. Because the proprietors can bestow upon 
their business their own time and dispense with 
dependence upon salaried sub-masters to half- 
conduct businesses for them. Because direct 
contact with their men, as well as the better re- 
muneration they will have to pay their men on 
account of the demand for labor by many other 
employers, will secure the earnest effort, vigor- 
ous movement, intelligent action and well-"vyshes 
of their employes. Because the employes them- 
selves will be thrifty stockholders in the con- 
cerns; and will have all the interest in the success 
of the concerns that ownership gives. 

Conversely, when a set of persons have plied 
the wrecking and consolidating processes to 
extinguish the separateness in entity of busi- 
nesses and industries, and have succeeded in 
merging all smaller concerns into a few enor- 
mous ones, they have originated a series of cum- 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 1 95 

brances, imwieldinesses and perplexities that ren- 
der the most economical production impossible. 
Even could there be fair distribution in connec- 
tion with consolidated production, the annual 
out-put from nature would be immensely short of 
possibilities. 



CHAPTER VIIL 



COMBINATIONS OF CAPITAL, JUSTIFIABLE 
AND UNJUSTIFIABLE. 



Combinations of capital into single enterprises 
are occasioned by different motives in men» 
These motives may be justifiable or unjustifiable. 
We may suppose an instance of justifiable com- 
bination. 

A party of persons conclude that it would be 
a paying investment to establish a shoe factory 
in the western town of Owago. The facts 
which they have taken into consideration are 
these : 

First. Shoes can be made cheaper and better 
by machinery than by hand. 

Second. The factory would be near to the 
raw material of cattle hides and others stuffs, and 
near the people who should want the shoes. 

Third. A factory that 'was most perfectly 
equipped, containing neither less capital than was 
necessary for proper carrying on of the business, 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. I97 

or such an excess as to make it cumbersome and 
costly to manage, could turn out shoes upon the 
lowest basis of cost. 

Fourth. Cheap shoes would make many sales, 
many sales would make many margins, many 
margins would make big profits. 

These facts, we will suppose, have caused the 
persons in question to decide to make the in- 
vestment. But the making of the investment is 
a combination of capital, as common under- 
standing goes. A considerable sum of value is 
put into a single enterprise. It requires, to erect 
a building of suitable dimensions, and to place in 
it a complete outfit of machinery and tools, and 
to stock it with a due amount of leather and other 
material, and to make provision for a sufficient 
quantity of surplus or operating fund, and to keep 
these all up to the proper standard, an estimated 
capital of, say, $50,000. This is a combination 
of capital, and similar to thousands of combinations 
of capital existing everywhere. 

But, what fault can be found with this combi- 
nation.^ None whatever. Why not.^ Because 
the founders have done nothing in the establish- 
ment of this industry, but what is a benefit to the 
rest of the community and to themselves. They 
have arranged to furnish to the community 
cheaper shoes than could be furnished before. 
They save a big share of the cost of all hand- 



198 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

work by emplo3^ment of labor-saving machinery. 
They save the cost of transporting raw hides 
away and finished shoes back again, over thousands 
of miles of railway. They have established a 
factory that can produce cheaper than one which 
contains more or less capital. These various sav- 
ings reflect to the advantage of all. The manu- 
facturers have maximum profit upon capital, at 
the same thne that the people have shoes at min- 
imum cost. Who, therefore, can find fault with 
a combination backed by such motives as gov- 
erned in the formation of this supposable one. 

If the same motives controlled all parties en- 
gao^ed in the manufacture of shoes, what would 
we see in industrialism as a result.^ Shoemakino: 
establishments would be distributed reo-ularlv 
over the country in the form of greatest per- 
fection of magnitude, neither too large or too 
small as respects capital contained, each supplying 
the territory within its own range. This could 
not but be, if the same motives controlled as did 
in the case just described. 

Let us now give attention to what would be an 
unjustifiable combination or one governed by un- 
justifiable motives. 

Instead of shoemakino^ establishments beino^ 
distributed here and there throughout the country 
in the form of smaller but complete concerns, we 
may find them existinof as immense establish- 



JNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. ^99 

ments upon few points of the continent, and all 
under a single management, agreement or pool. 
Various may have been the modes by which the 
shoe manufacturers got themselves into this latter 
form of combination. There may have been a 
general agreement among all pre-existing inde- 
pendent manufacturers to thus consolidate. Or, 
the stronger pre-existing manufacturers may have 
joined together and bought out the weaker man- 
ufacturers, or crushed them out if they refused 
to sell out, and then formed their combination. 
Or, those who first started into the business, may 
have, by means of menacing new factories with 
railroad discrimination, or under-priced sales in 
the vicinities where the latter should start, kept 
new factories from ever coming into existence. 
Whatever has been the mode employed for get- 
ting the shoe industry under control of a very few 
persons, we will suppose that a very few persons 
have combined to get the shoe industry under 
their control. 

The question then arises, what has been the 
motive of parties who have engaged in this sort 
of combination ? It could not have been to let 
the people have cheaper shoes, for they have done 
that which enhances the cost of o^etting shoes 
into the possession of the people. By establishing 
factories at but few points, probably upon one 
side of the continent, they have placed a long 



200 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

distance between themselves and the bulk of their 
raw material, and between themselves and the 
majority of those who are to be the patrons for 
their wares. They have also aggregated the in- 
dustries into a few enormous or unwieldy concerns 
which cannot, by any means, produce shoes at 
the lowest possible cost at which shoes can be 
made. What can be the motive, then, of those 
who have combined to monopolize the shoe in- 
dustry. The motive cannot be else than a motive 
to profit at the expense of the public. Those who 
formed the combination cannot have formed it 
for any other purpose than to enable them to 
overcharge and underpay in such a manner as to 
overcome the extra cost of making and trans- 
portation and yet to leave them a greater profit 
than was allowed without a monopolizing com- 
bination. A fortune at the expense of the world 
must have been the controlling thought with 
them. 

There has now been described two forms of 
combination. One was a concentration of capital 
for the purpose of having enough under a single 
management to form a complete shoe factory. 
The motive was to gain greater profit, not by 
adding to the price of shoes, but by saving upon 
the cost of making and upon the cost of trans- 
portation. The other was a concentration of 
capital for the purpose of getting all the shoe 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 20I 

industries under one or a very few managements. 
The motive was to gain greater profit, not by 
saving in the cost of supplying shoes, but by set- 
ting a fictitious advance upon the price of shoes 
and forcing the people to pay it. My selection 
of the shoe industry is not to be interpreted as 
signifying that the shoe manufactories of the 
country consist of the one or the other forms of 
combination. That industry has been selected 
for mere illustration's sake. 

The first form of combination, I call a justifiable 
combination, and claim that it consists of a due 
and beneficent concentration of capital. The 
second I call an unjustifiable combination, and 
claim that it consists of an overdue and injurious 
concentration of capital. 

The first form of combination I say is right, 
the second form of combination I say is wrong. 

By right, I mean that which conduces to the 
long-living, comfort and enjoyment of man. By 
wrong, I mean that which conduces to the con- 
trary. 

Now, I ask, what do we work for ? In order 
that we may have those things which are neces- 
sary to our long-living, comfort and happiness, 
or, in short, welfare. Then the more we can 
produce with a given amount of energ}^ and ex- 
penditure the better. That being so, a combi- 
nation that, like the first one described, gives us 



202 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

cheaper goods than could be given to us without 
it, is a combination in the interest of right. The 
other combination is in the interest of wronsf. 

We have now dealt with two kinds of combi- 
nations, under the designations of justifiable and 
unjustifiable. These complete the list of combi- 
nations formed with a view to profit. They em- 
brace one more, however, than is commonly 
conceived to be. It is a common thouo:ht that 
all aggregations of wealth are in principle and 
underl3ang motives identical. This is an error, 
and one which I take to be a very grave one, for 
I believe it to be the cause of so many being 
unwilling to take strong issue against monopolies, 
at the same time that they admit that monopolies 
are the foundation ot many serious evils. They 
imagine that a contest against monopoly is a 
contest against concentration of capital in every 
form, and perceiving the benefits of justifiable 
concentration they refrain from striking a blow 
at any for fear of doing harm to all. 

But the error is a thing of thought. There is 
as much difference between a combination formed 
for the purpose of adequacy of capital in a par- 
ticular trade, and one formed for the purpose of 
monopolizing an entire trade, as there is between 
daylight and darkness. There is no parallel 
between an independent company of shoe manu- 
facturers, doing business in Owago, in competition 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 203 

with other shoe manufacturers in other places, 
and a combination composed of all the shoe man- 
ufacturers in the United States. Their modes 
of locating, operating, dealing, attitude toward 
the public, and attendant effects are diametrically 
opposed to each other. 

A justifiable combination is one which cheap- 
ens production and gives more to be distributed 
into society than can be procured in any other 
way. It is a combination which has no advan- 
tage over the public, and therefor must deal 
with the public upon the same terms, as regards 
privileges and restraint, that the public deals 
with it. It is a combination which makes the 
same rate of profit upon the unit of energy and 
capital employed that every other business 
makes, and therefore gains nothing which it 
cannot itself use, and will not let others use. It 
is a combination that appears or dissolves as 
supply and demand dictate, and does not dis- 
tort production and enterprise out of all harmony 
with salient needs. It is a combination that has 
no selfish designs against the public whatever, 
but seeks only to get capital into the best pay- 
ing forms after the example of our ordinary 
tradesmen, manufacturers and producers, pursu- 
ing their vocations all around us. 

An unjustifiable combination, on the other 
hand, enhances first cost of goo ds, holds the 



204 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

public by the throat and dictates to the rest of the 
world. It denies the general public a good living 
after they have earned it, and piles up products 
to mould, rust and spoil. If wastes capital in 
mammoth investments that are only half needed, 
and forces the people to shift and half-do with 
constant lack of means. It keeps a million of 
men constantly idle, divests the common people 
of their homesteads, and sends the nation whir- 
ring along towards destruction. 

The nature and doings of these two forms of 
combination are so entirel}^ unlike that they can- 
not exist together. While four men control the 
railroads of the nation, there cannot be a hun- 
dred or more different railroad companies doing 
business in competition with one another, and 
working out the prosperity of themselves and 
the people. While the woolen industry is held 
in the hands of a few parties in the east, there 
cannot flourish woolen factories in the vicinities 
where both the wool could be grown and the 
woolens sold. While there is a coal monopoly 
in the city of Pittsburgh, Kansas, there can be 
no flourishing mines at Columbus, Hollowell, 
Oswego and other places along the coal belt. 

Now, if I am right in what I have gone over, 
we are brought to the question of a choice. 
" Which shall it be," is the question. Shall it be 
industries in the form of monopolv or shall it be 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 205 

the extinction of such form, and in lieu thereof, 
industries of adequate size and conducted in com- 
petition with one another. Blot out the form of 
monopoly, and you have the other. Have the 
form of monopoly and the other is blotted out. 
Blot out the form of monopoly and you are rid 
of its influences. Have the form of monopoly and 
you cannot avoid its influences. Blot out the 
form of monopoly and you rid society of a curse. 
Have the form of monopoly and you have some- 
thing there is no necessity for whatever. 

Some may imagine that the destruction of the 
form of monopoly is the destruction of an industr}^ 
itself. But that is merely an error of the mind. 
Capital contained in the form of monopolies could 
no more be obliterated than the earth could be 
sent turning backward. The monopolists will 
keep their capital as they have a right to do, but 
they will never cease to use it as monopolists do 
while they are allowed to hold it in the form of 
monopolies. 

We hold to these conclusions: 

Adequate aggregations of capital into enter- 
prises are necessary to cheapest cost of production 
and exchange. They and free competition go 
together, are mutually promotive and are es- 
sential to the welfare of society. 

Consolidated aggregations, comprising all the 
industries of a class into the form of a monopoly. 



206 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

fail to possess the advantages of adequate aggre- 
gations, while they lead to all the enormous evils 
of which society makes complaint. 

Where there is aggregation into the form of 
monopoly, there cannot be adequate aggregations 
and free competition. The direct contrary of 
this is true. 

Fair taxation will cause monopolied aggre- 
gations to yield to the ascendency of adequate 
aggregations and free competition. 

Fair taxation is the true remedy for the great 
evils which have the monopoly of industries as 
their cause. 



CHAPTER IX. 



COMMONPLACE FALLACIES. 



I desire In this chapter to bring together some 
thoughts that are of a sundried and therefore 
disconnected character. 

A common mode of raising money for carry- 
ing on vast enterprises Hke the building of rail- 
roads, bridges, waterworks and so fortli, Is 
through the issue and sale of bonds and stocks. 
It is a rule to go to the large capitalists, congre- 
gated usually about the money centers, to affect 
the exchanges. The purchase of securities by 
the. capitalists does not imply that they have 
undertaken to execute, or have led in any way 
to the origination of the enterprises their money 
Is to be expended upon. They may have noth- 
ing to do with the practical operation of carry- 
ing on the works; may never have known of 
their contemplated existence until sought to in- 
vest in the securities of the concerns. 

The point I desire to draw especial attention 



2o8 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

to is, that the large capitaHsts are appealed to 
Invariably, or almost invariably, whenever mon- 
ied means for the prosecution of enterprises are 
souorht to be evolved out of the crude or ina- 
daptible forms of stocks or bonds, based in the 
ordinary ways. It Is a custom to go to. the great 
capitalists and money centers to get securities 
exchanged for working funds ; and the custom 
Is so common that it does not occur to many 
that that is any other than an unalterable mode 
of procedure. I think that very many men 
talked to upon the subject will hold that this 
practice is a necessary and unchangable one. 

These same persons believe also that we could 
not have great and costly improvements if there 
were no places where money was found in large 
collective quantities. In fact they think that the 
massing of wealth in large quantities into single 
hands, is what inspires large Improvements ; 
that the latter would neither be probable or pos- 
sible if there were no large capitalists to origin- 
ate and encourage them for the purpose of get- 
tine their funds Into investment. 

Such views can only lead to the conclusion 
that the amassing of the surplus wealth of the 
country into few hands Is desirable, or else that 
great and expensive improvements had best be 
entirely dispensed with. 

But such views can only be classed as misap- 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. ^09 

prehensions. When persons have Imbued 
themselves with the idea that great aggregated 
monied possessions are the originating agents 
or prerequisites of great performances, they have 
failed to ground themselves upon genuine facts. 
They have failed, in the first place, to credit 
great and expensive performances to their gen- 
uine authorships, viz: the demand for them. In 
the second place, they have failed to distinguish 
between funds aggregated and belonging to 
single owners, and those aggregated for tie 
purpose of prosecuting enterprises. It is 
necessary to have large funds at hand to draw 
upon to meet the expenses of great enter- 
prises, but it is not necessary for them to 
pre-exist in great bulk in single hands before 
they can be obtained. 

A ready fund is evolved out of a crude fund, 
like grants, stocks, bonds and so forth, by sales 
of and loans upon this crude fund. That the 
sales and loans are usually or invariabl}' made at 
the money centers is only an incident of circum- 
stances and not an unalterable mode of procedure. 
When it is understood why it Is that the money 
Is concentrated in a few hands, it will then be 
made plain why application is made to the few 
rich invariably to get funds for purpose of push- 
ing forward improvements. 

If the gain-exactors had not become unjustly 



2IO UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

possessed of the people's surpluses they would not 
be the sole owners of unfixed or investment 
seeking capital. If the people were allowed to 
keep what was justly theirs, they would have 
surpluses to invest in profit bearing securities. 
Under a fair system of distribution, great improve- 
ments would be developed as under the present 
system, and large sums of mone}' would be raised 
to meet expenditures, as now is done, but these 
sums of mone}^ would not be obtained from rich 
capitalists alone. All classes would contribute. 
All sorts of people from the richest down to the 
least well-to-do, would have means to spare, and 
investment would be general, and the fruits of 
investment would be distributed among myriads 
of owners, ranging from large to small, and fol- 
lowing all kinds of pursuits, and living every- 
where. 

An illustration will not be out of place. A 
railroad becomes a necessity somewhere, any- 
where, to the extent of provoking a resolve that 
it sliall be built. Preliminaries are gone through 
with, plans are devised and executed, and in due 
course of time all is in readiness for the work 
proper of building to begin. One of the incidents 
helping to compose the whole round of activitives 
necessary to execute the work, is the flow of un- 
tixed capital into the enterprise for investment. 
If the people needing the road have not been im- 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 2 II 

poverished by the promoters of unfair distri- 
bution, they will be able to advance funds for the 
construction of the road. But if they have been 
despoiled of their surplus wealth by the exactors, 
the latter will become the owners of the stocks, 
bonds and gifts, by virtue of having been the only 
parties able to advance funds for the construction 
and equipment of the road. But whatever be 
the forms in which the ready capital exists, 
whether in m3Tiads of moderate surpluses in the 
hands of the earners of it, or in consolidated as:- 
gregations in the hands of the despoilers of the 
people, it will go into the enterprise, because the 
enterprise attracts it. It is the essence and na- 
ture of money to take unto itself wings, as it were, 
and wend its way, in large or small quantities as 
it may happen to exist, to those quarters where 
it is most wanted, because it there serves its 
masters best by securing for them the greatest 
returns. I write this to dissolve an erroneous and 
mischievous impression many harbor in regard 
to the way money must be raised for the exe- 
cution of costly enterprises. 

There is no reason, except unfair distribution, 
why every community should not furnish the 
funds for the construction and ownership of all 
its own enterprises, big and little, private and 
public, railroad and manufacturing. Guarantee 
the people in common a fair hold upon their ac. 



212 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

quisitions, and communities would take care of 
their own enterprises in a manner that would 
show an even development of the country, home 
ownerships, home manufactures, and the general 
enrichment of all. Autocracy of wealth is not 
natural, it is artificial. Outside ownership is not 
natural, it is artificial. 

Manufacturers, of the present day, impose the 
burden of racing materials across the continent 
and back again, for change from raw articles to 
finished ones, when the conversion could have 
been managed better at home, and the services 
of transporters utilized to better advantage. 
This does not occur from choice. It occurs, be- 
cause it is the business of monopolists to absorb 
the people's means, crush presumptive rivals, and 
concentrate industries to suit their inclinations. 
Give people freedom and their earnings, and local- 
ization of industries would take place, because 
cheaper, and because there would be funds at 
home for the work. 

Fair terms would not onl}^ give us home in- 
dustries but would also work a radical difference 
in the plan of founding industries. People would 
not bes^srer themselves and transmit burdens to 
succeeding generations in the vain attempt to 
build up their vicinities. Why.^ Fair dealing en- 
riches ever3^where, and plentious capital, anxious 
for investment, would be willing to fay for the 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 213 

privilege of anchoring itself where the prosperity 
of the people guaranteed good patronage. A 
people able to buy is the sufficient, the best en- 
ticer of capital. 

Are not bonds of aid a superfluous tribute to 
greed .-^ Would capital be idle if people refused 
such aid.^ Is monev less anxious to s^et into in- 
vestment than the people are to have the invest- 
ment.^ Does a bond add a cent to the money 
keen for investment ? Between the o^er of bonds 
everywhere, and the refusal of them everywhere, 
would any difterence be made in the general lo- 
cating of industries.^ And do the founders of 
industries advance their own welfare by impov- 
erishing their prospective patrons through bonded 
indebtednesses } A study of these questions, it 
appears to me, should lead us into conduct widely 
different from what it is. 

BORN MONEY MAKERS. 

Some people entertain the idea that the hand- 
ling of riches is the gift of the few, and that the 
quick-bred millionaires of the day have invariably 
made their money by fair and square contests 
with nature, as opposed to exacting it from off" 
their fellows. As to natural gift, I admit that 
fitness of personal endowment will help an indi- 
vidual in his business, but I hold that training is 



214 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

the main essential for the successful handling of 
wealth, as it is for the successful doing of any- 
thing else. Rear one in the use and employment 
of wealth, and he will know how to take care 
of it; and what to do with it. On the other hand 
bequeath a large sum to a person who has never 
had control of more than a little, and the chances 
are largely on the side of his misapplying, and 
thereby letting a portion of it slip away from 
him. The banker would hardly make a success 
from the begining at the new business of mer- 
chandizing, and the railroad magnate would fail 
as ignobly at trying to run a truck patch as the 
truck raiser would in trying to boss a railroad. 
Managing capital is a trade like an3^thing else. 
To credit our quick-made railroad and manufac- 
turing masters with being the natural starters of 
themselves, is to forget what have been the 
mushroom productions of our land grants, bonded 
aids, monied gifts, and tariff taxes that have re- 
quired no higher sort of genius in individuals 
than willingness to receive. If there lived in 
this world individuals who could extract from 
nature hundreds of times faster than the gene- 
rality of persons, we would get demonstration of 
the fact in such a way as would convince us. 
We would see men take hold of a machine and 
make it to produce a hundred fold in excess of 
what was accomplished by ordinary persons. 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 215 

The land would be made by some of these 
extraordinary men to produce its thousands of 
bushels, where common culture brought forth less 
than hundreds of bushels. Such results we never 
see, however, and therefore cannot grant that 
there is more difference in the capacities of men 
to fairly enrich themselves than that incident to 
ordinary variety. 

LET us SEE ARIGHT. 

Let us know that we earn to live and do not 
live to earn. Let us know that we save capital 
not to look at, but to assist us in getting more 
upon which to live. Let the capitalists know 
that capital can get the mastery of man. When 
railroads and manufactories have become so over- 
grown as to require all that can be earned with 
them by the most vigorous extortion to keep 
them in form and repair, then will the owners of 
railroads and manufactories be capital poor. 
Then will they be upon the verge of self -disaster. 
Then will an adverse season bring on famine and 
start the nation in a body to weakness and 
decline. 

Looked at from the money making point of 
view alone, the capitalist has nothing to gain by 
getting the better of the people. For by so doing 
he destroys the prosperity of the very class upon 
whose prosperity his own prosperity depends. 



2l6 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

To whom is he going to sell among a people who 
have been deprived of their means of buying? 
How is he going to make an industry pay in a 
country void of other industries to correspond 
and keep up trade to match ? Let us understand 
that the plagues which harrass us arise purely from 
plethorea versus dearth and that the remedy must 
be sought in balance. 

Let the capitalist understand that contentment 
with normal pay, upon the principle of "quick 
sales and small profits," will advance him none 
the less rapidly, at the same time that it will in- 
sure him permanent prosperity by providing him 
with a public that can respond to his advances 
with the same vigor that he responds to theirs; 
that can exhaust the spare he has while he ex- 
hausts their spare supply, and that can keep his 
wheels forever in motion by keeping their own 
in vigorous motion. 

WHOM DOES IT HURT? 

Who is hurt by unfair distribution } Every 
body; the exactor as well as the victim. Then 
to the stickler for the rights of the capitalist: 
Would 3'ou force him to do that which will ben- 
efit him and the race, or let him force us to do 
that which will harm him and the race? It is 
force in either case, as you look at it. Which do 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 21 7 

you prefer? Which is the design of nature? I 
say you do not observe your whole duty in being 
honest to others; 3'ou neglect much of your duty 
in not requiring others to be honest towards you 
and yours. 

Let me say that in making such assertions, I 
do not mean to imply that I would divest the 
capitalist of a cent of his possessions. I would 
force him to disburse his capital in such manner 
as to make it of real and permanent value to him, 
and to society in the future. I would stop capital 
from getting the mastery over man. We do not 
dispute the necessity of our subjection to the 
sway of nature. But let us not be mastered by 
anything we create. We create capital. Let 
us keep mastery over it. 

LEGITIMATE FORTUNES. 

We have no complaint to make, as might be 
erroneously implied, against him who amasses 
rapid fortune through superior productive efforts. 
The man who has rapidly enriched himself 
through a useful invention or discover}'^ is to be 
extolled. Because while he ma}^ have tempo- 
rarily inconvenienced some he has benefitted all 
the rest. He has cheapened one product and 
endeared all others in comparison. He has 
enabled others to use more of his, yet save more 



2i8 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

of their own. He has raised the degree of every 
man's comfort by requiring less expendure in 
one direction than was required before. Thus 
we see, there is a vast distinction between the 
producer of a fortune and the extorter of a for- 
tune; between him who amasses a fortune out of 
or through conquer of the elements, and him 
who amasses a fortune by extracting it from the 
produce of others. The one adds to the aggre- 
gated wealth of the country, the other changes 
wealth from one hand to another, without making 
any increase. The one helps us to climb by ad- 
ding to our accumulations, the other keeps us 
from climbing by robbing us of our accumulations. 
The one as he goes up reaches out a helping 
hand to pull us up after him, the other reaches 
his hand that he may grasp our accumulations 
and build of them a monument of pomp. . The 
one ameliorates and sets to advancing, the other 
burdens and sets to declining. The differences of 
condition which owe their authorship to the one 
are healthful, necessary and natural ; the differ- 
ences of condition promoted by the other are 
abnormal, outrao;eous, extravagant. Here we 
see the distinction,^and it is plain that there is no 
relationship between the two modes of self- 
enrichment. 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 219 

LABOR COMBINATIONS. 

I call attention to this subject to show that 
there is nothing justifiable in this method of se- 
curing welfare. The underlying principle of a 
labor combination, and the underlying principle 
of a monopoly are identical. Both are inspired 
by a motive which looks to the sole benefit of the 
victorious, though those who are upon the weak 
and defensive side may not be ready to so ac- 
knowledge. They, or some of them, may honestly 
think that, could they win as they pleased, they 
would stop at justice, but self-interest forbids any 
to construe the Hnc of justice to be this side of 
bare subsistence to others* There is no use in 
disguising the truth that self-interest is the ruling 
motive in man, and that self-interest and honesty 
do not ride together. As long as we indulge in 
false sentiment for the sake of our feelings so 
lonor will we be a thousand times worse off than 
it we did not. There is but one way to do; that 
is to acknowledge the supremacy of self-interest 
and then govern ourselves accordingly. We 
must admit that a human being with complete 
authority is an incarnate fiend, and always will be, 
and that no remedy that looks to placing in power 
any body of men, in whatever shape or form, in 
preference to others, will afiect the removal of 
the evils from which we suffer. The remedy 



220 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

which is productive of good, must be one which 
places all upon an equal footing with regard to 
power and restraint. 

Labor unions may plead the necessity of self- 
defense. While the necessity exists, there is 
justification of the measure, without doubt, but 
wisdom dictates the dissolving of every need of 
organized self-defense, through the going back 
to, and the righting up of, first causes. 

STRIKES AND REVENGEFUL VIOLENCE. 

Strikes and the resort to violence against the 
properties and persons of the capitalists, are both 
impracticable and unjustifiable. Strikes are im- 
practicable, because strikers lose time and wages, 
seldom carry their points, and have themselves 
yielded to only when it is thought more expedient 
for this to be done, and for them to be defeated in 
the future by detail. Destruction of property is im- 
practicable because it is the people who become 
the losers. The corporations sustain damages 
for the destruction of their properties, the perish, 
ment of goods, and the failure to execute con- 
tracts, which damages are obtained through tax- 
ation of the people, the strikers included. Be- 
sides, the policy should not be to destroy the re- 
sults of labor, but to secure its proper use. Fur- 
ther, acts of revenge against capitalists cannot 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 221 

be based upon good cause. For while we ma}^ 
admit that the exactors have long robbed the 
people, pitilessly starved them, ruthlessl}^ em. 
bruited them, malevolently stricken them with 
disease, and have half shortened their lives, yet 
the exactors can justly plead that it has been by 
the sufferance and aid of the common people that 
they have so done. We have not seen how to 
prevent exaction, and have therefore unwittingly 
bred up exactors and given them our encour- 
agement and support, which is to inculpate all in 
the sin of exaction or leave none to be blamed. 
The exactor is what the victim would be if he 
could, and is merely a winner in a state of so- 
ciety which promotes the setting of a class above 
class. We therefore find no good grounds for 
practice of violence against the exactors. 

WHAT THEY SAY. 

''See what a magnificent industry we've got,'^ 
proudly exclaims the admirer of the American 
s^'Stem, " we could supply the world if only we 
had the market. '^ 

That's the trouble, proud admirer, your in- 
dustry is too magnificent. If a part of the cap- 
ital contained in it were now in the hands of the 
poorer classes, they would be covering up their 
sterner needs, and you would have as much as 



222 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

you could do to supply the part of the world your 
industry was destined to supply. 

" We cannot pay any greater wages without 
losing money," says the rich manufacturer. 

No, your big industr}^ is twice the size that's 
needed, and a voracious expense consumer, busy 
or idle ; so the laborer must go on short rations 
and dine much of his time with Duke Humphrey. 

" But we always have paid the highest wages 
we could." 

Then how did you save up enough to build up 
an oversized industry? 

'*A big trade with the foreign countries is what 
we need to rid ourselves of our surpluses and to 
keep our factories going," says another. 

Who would you sell to in the overstocked 
foreign countries.? What would you take in 
exchange for 3^our goods ? What would you do 
with what you got in exchange? Would you 
pzve it to the public, you have made moneyless 
and unable to buy? How would paying higher 
prices to the public, and charging them less for 
your own goods, act toward ridding you of your 
surpluses and keeping your factories down to 
proper proportions? • 

" We do not want to degrade the laborers and 
masses of this country to the standard that exists 
in the European countries?" 

Then, I suppose we are not descendents of the 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 223 

people of Europe, and possessed of the sort of 
flesh, blood and hearts, as they ? Is it not time 
a theory was gotten up to prove that the God 
who creates the European, and the God who 
creates the American are not one and the same 
great Ruler? 

" The trouble is that we can produce more 
than we can consume." 

' More than who can consume; the sewing girls 
and garret habitants of New- York city ? No, it 
can't be them. Tlien whose powers of consump- 
tion are we exceeding.^ Let's see. Now we 
have it. It is the capitalist's. Well, let us see what 
earnings are for. Only two things ; to supply 
personal wants, to supply capital wants. The 
capitalist cannot consume his surplus possessions 
in satisfaction of either of these wants, therefore 
he has no need for these surpluses whatever, and 
they are only a worry to him. Now, Mr. Capi- 
talist why not end the worry by throwing the 
horrid surpluses over to the poor to be feasted up- 
on and used up by them. The time would sooner 
come around, then, when .you could have the sat- 
isfaction of seeing, what you so much long to 
see, viz; activity of your industries and demand 
for your products. 

"It is ^brains' that gives the capitalist his 
money." 

Just so, but let us see. The middle class, it 



224 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

must be admitted by all who are willing not to 
hedge upon facts, are falling behind. That is, 
they are not earning a living for themselves, and 
the capitalists are supplying them with the defi- 
ciency of food and clothes and taking their pro- 
perties in exchange for them. The middle class 
then, in fact, are a great burden to the capitalists. 
The laborer must be a much greater burden to 
the capitalists since they have no property from 
which to earn even partial support. The rea- 
soning carried out must lead us to the conclusion 
that the public are living by the sufferance of the 
rich and that the rich are the authors of all 
wealth in sight. To be this they must have 
"brains" indeed. 

" What would the laborer do without the exis- 
tence of capital to give him employment.'"' 

Your Genesis reads: "In the beginning God 
created the heavens, and the earth. Then he cre- 
ated capital. Then he created mankind, that a 
few chosen ones might take hold of this capital 
and keep the multitude from starving." 

** Population is pressing against subslstance.'" 

So I hear 3'ou say, but in the beginning of your 
tale, you said the trouble was over-production. 
Inconsistenc}^, thou art a very cheap commodit}^ 
I see a world but little used. I see capital but 
partially employed, and I see a large portion of 
the population doomed to enforced idleness, yet we 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 225 

still live. That makes me think if man's energies 
and his capital could be always employed, and to 
the best advantage we would be most happily 
conditioned. ^ 

" The practical suggestions of one successful 
business manager are worth more than the doc- 
trines of all the theorists 3'ou can scare up." 

Well, if you mean by "successful business man- 
ager," him whose judgment has led him into 
developing an over-sized and glutted industr}^ 
without looking out for corresponding develop- 
ments to match, and whose management has 
never relieved but doubled his necessity to be 
bolstered with subsidies, tax reliefs, and favors of 
every kind begged from the public, then I don't 
agree with you that your "successful business 
manager's" suggestions are worth a shuck to 
an3'body.^ I consider him an outright failure, a 
dead beat, one who could not maintain himself 
and industry a single season by honorable, inde- 
pendent and self-reliant effort. What would be 
thought of a groceryman doing a heavy retail 
trade in New- York, should he move his full stock 
to a country village and expect within the latter 
place to do a remunerative trade? And what is to 
be thought of the business tact of the exactors as. 
a class, who go deHberately about incapacitating 
the balance of the world from carrying on with 



226 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

them an even-handed, quick-buying, cash-paying 
trade ? 

" We have got the upper hand, and we propose 
to hold it," comes out as a last retort. 

But you may not always have the upper hand. 
Look at the foes you are breeding in the popu- 
lation that is forced to eke out a precarious 
subsistence amidst discouragements, deprivation, 
disgust, discord and disdain. Look at the ene- 
mies you are rearing in the job-hunters, semi- 
charitists, hovel-habitants, hoodlums and tramps. 
Their condition favors the rankest growth of the 
elements of combustibility and violence. Feeling 
that they are the outraged victims of those who 
are above them, there flows in their bosoms an 
undercurrent of enmity against all save them- 
selves. Being propertyless, they feel no interest 
in the preservation of properties. Finding the 
gateways ot responsibility and trust closed to 
them, they become reckless of what is said of 
their character or their name. Shut off by their 
condition and poverty from all the avenues of en- 
lightenment, from schools, churches, newspapers 
and books, their reasonings and methods partake 
of the deficiencies of their mental culture. What 
can we expect from such a class but a readiness 
for mob-law, anarchism, fire, dynamite, violence 
and bloodshed. Such things harmonize with 
their thoughts, their passions, their enmity. They 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 22 7 

appear to afford to them the only avenue of bet- 
terments, since they feel that law and order is 
degradation of them and degradation only. Is 
there no danger to be apprehended from this 
class .^ This is a rapid age. Nothing is done b}^ 
halves. Historic events afford no guage of what 
might be. I think the capitalist is as bhnd to 
this as to every other effect, if he thinks he can 
escape the eventful wrath of an army made up, 
in this day and age, of brutish and revengeful 
spirits. 

I shall not occupy further time in elaborating 
upon the theory proposed in this work. As to 
its correctness, it would be exceeding the bounds 
of common sense for me to say more than that I 
believed in it. I believe no error is made in iden- 
tifying unfair distribution with the cause of the 
engrossing evils of society. How there could be 
unfair distribution without just the evils I have 
tried to connect with it, or how the evils could 
be without unfair distribution, I am unable to see. 
The grievances certainly are bottomed upon earn- 
ings. "What are we to do with our surplus 
means f'' and "what are we to do for want of 
means f'' are certainly the grave but conflicting 
murmurings of the hour; and both sides have cause 
for complaint. The poor can appreciate what it 
is to be short of provisions for present comforts 
and short of capital to create future comforts. 



228 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

The capitalist does not lack for provisions of life 
but he can appreciate what it is to have mam- 
moth factories and mammoth railroads situated 
among an impecunious set of customers. He can 
appreciate what it is to have loads of facilities to 
do with, but without having others half able to 
tax his powers to do for. But he does not seem 
to appreciate how he got himself and themselves 
into the conditions both are in. He does not 
seem to think that he has over-expanded his in- 
dustry by destroying his market, and that the 
continuance of the process will eventually render 
his own property entirely worthless on his hands. 
Still, if he does not know how he has misfixed 
himself, he knows that he is misfixed for we hear 
his murmurings of complaint, and we know the 
nature of them. We know the nature of the 
opposite complaints, and from a comparison 
can plainly see that the difficulty resembles 
the case of a ship with its load all too much to 
one side. 

The nature of the difficulty suggest to us the 
remedy. It should be such distribution of earn- 
ings as will establish balance. It does not mean 
taking from one and giving to another; it means 
readjustment of wealth in the hands of those who 
have it, to a basis of prosperit}^ 

I have explained what would be the good ef- 
fects of industrial freedom or that state of thing's 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 229 

in which all men stood upon the same footing 
with regard to liberty and restraint, none co- 
ercing more than he was coerced, and the coercion 
that was, being the coercion bred of competition, 
man with man, throughout all society. In- 
dustrial freedom does not afTect the removal of 
all restraint. It only distributes restraint and 
makes one man as powerful as another in its ex- 
ercise. 

But when that is done, everything is done that 
is desired. Each man then, becomes an effective 
monitor to watch over all others, and compel the 
others in their dealings with the public to observe, 
as well as discover to us, fair dealings. There is 
inaugurated mutual interchange of watchfulness 
and check, mutual bargaining, mutual privilege 
to accept or reject, the absence of any who has 
more power to dictate than others. Society under 
such terms becomes a self-regulating machine, 
valuable because effective for good, and because 
it relieves people of the necessity of forming, for 
the prevention of encroachment, restrictive mea- 
sures that, it has before been shown, are after all, 
unavailing. ^ 

How are we going to have this mutual inter- 
change of privileges and forces, this free compe- 
tition ? Do away with the fundamental instrumen- 
talities by which unfair distribution is executed. 
What are the fundamental instrumentalities? 



230 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

Unfair taxation and unfair exchange. To pre- 
vent unfair taxation we must substitute fair tax- 
ation by positive resolve and enactment. To 
prevent unfair exchange we must provide for the 
abolishment of the instruments of unfair ex- 
change which are monopolies. To provide for 
the abolishment of these we must work through 
the medium of self-interest and make it more 
profitable, at sight^ to not monopolize than to 
monopolize. By so doing we prepare to effect 
through the operations of natural law what we 
can never hope to effect by artificial law. 

We place ourselves in such an attitude toward 
our self-interest that as we are actuated by it so 
is it best for societ}^ that we should be actuated. 



CHAPTER X. 



THE REMEDY, 



The remedy for unfair distribution and its at- 
tendant evils is to be sought in taxation of capi- 
tal at increased percentages along with increased 
worths, as it exists under single managements or 
pools. 

TABLES. 

For the purpose of illustration, I present some 
tables showing plans of increasing the taxation 
of properties along with increases in the valua- 
tions of properties. The tables may not embrace 
the best forms that could be devised for the pur- 
pose they are designed to effect, but I present 
them in the interests, subsidiarily, of method, 
uniformity and ease of calculation. We first as- 
sume that the revenue needs, in a specific case,, 
subjects the capital of $i,oooeven, to a rate per 
cent, of tax equalling one cent upon the dollar. 



232 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 



Then we consider $i,ooo to be a unit of valua- 
tion, doubling and trebling itself, and so on. We 
add one-tenth of a cent tax when the capital ex- 
ceeds $i,ooo, and does not exceed $2,000; two- 
tenths of a cent when it exceeds $2,000, and not 
$3,000, the process being kept up as is shown. 
The tables are constructed with the use of even 
valuations treated, in all cases except the last, 
as if they embraced more than their even valu- 
ations. The tax upon fractional parts, which 
are fractional parts of the unit of increase^ may 
be obtained b}^ getting a half, third or fourth of 
the tax of the unit, at the rate of tax it bears, 
according as the fraction is a half, third or fourth 
of that unit. 



Values 


Rates on 


the 


Taxes on 


Total even 


Taxed. 


Dollar, 


each $1,000. 


Taxes. 


$ 1,000 


I i-io cents. 


$11 00 


$11 GO 


2,000 


I 2-10 


a 


12 00 


24 00 


3,000 


I 3-10 


f< 


13 00 


39 00 


4,000 


I 4-10 


<( 


14 00 


56 00 


5,000 


I 5-10 


n 


15 00 


75 00 


6,000 


I 6-10 


<( 


16 00 


96 00 


7,000 


I 7-10 


iC 


17 00 


119 00 


8,000 


I 8-10 


(t 


18 00 


144 GO 


Q.OOO 


I 9-10 


u 


19 00 


171 00 


10,000 


2 


iC 


2000 


200 00 



Subject to this rate, the party with the capital 
of $2,250 pays one-fourth more than $11.00, or 
$13.75. The party with a capital of $2,500 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 233 

pays, for the $500, one-half of what he pays upon 
$1,000 at the $2,000 rate, or $6.00, and upon 
all $30.00. So, for other fractions. The last 
sum, $10,000, being that and no more, pays at 
the even rate of two cents on the dollar. As 
soon as $100, or any other fraction of a unit, is 
added, then it and the fraction become liable for 
an increase, next above, of tax. 

Here is another table showing less speed of 
variation and increase in the tax. It taxes each 
person the same upon the first $1,000 worth of 
capital. Then it raises the rate upon his second 
$1,000 worth, does so again upon his third 
$1,000 worth, and proceeds so to the end: 







Rates on the 




Values Taxed. 


Dollar. 


Taxes. 


First 


^1,000 


I i-io cents. 


^11 00 


Second 


1,000 


I 2-10 


(t 


12 00 


Third 


1,000 


I 3-10 


(( 


13 00 


Fourth 


1,000 


I 4-10 


(1 


14 00 


Fifth 


1,000 


I 5-10 


t( 


15 00 


Sixth 


1,000 


I 6-10 


<( 


16 00 


Seventh 


1,000 


I 7-10 


(t 


17 00 


Eighth 


1,000 


I 8-10 


it 


18 00 


Ninth 


1,000 


I 9 10 


it 


19 00 


Tenth 


1,000 


2 


(C 


20 00 



Subject to this rate the operator with a $1000 
capital pays $11.00 while the operator with 
$2,000 pays $23.00, and the operator with $3,000 
pays $36.00 and the others pay as simple addition 



234 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

will show, fractional parts not considered. Ex- 
perience must demonstrate what rate of increase 
is the best. 

Let us suppose that only three-fourths of what 
the above tables will produce is the amount of 
revenue required. Then, beginning with a 
$10,000 plus valuation, and using $10,000 as the 
unit of increase, and applying the rate per cent 
of speedier increase, we have as follows : 



^alues 


Rates on the 


Tax on 


Total even 


'axed. 


Dollar, 


each $10,000. 


Taxes. 


10,000 


3-4 of 2 I -10 cents. 


$15750 


$ 157 50 


20,000 


3-4 of 2 2-10 


n 


165 00 


330 CO 


30,000 


3-4 of 2 3-10 


it 


172 50 


51750 


40,000 


3-4 of 2 4-10 


f< 


180 00 


720 00 


50,000 


3-4 of 2 5-10 


iC 


187 50 


937 50 


60,000 


3-4 of 2 6-10 


(• 


195 00 


1,170 00 


70,000 


3-4 of 2 7-10 


it 


202 50 


1,417 50 


80,000 


3-4 of 2 8-10 


<c 


210 00 


1,680 00 


90,000 


3-4 of 2 9-10 


(C 


217 50 


1,957 50 


100,000 


3-4 of 3 


tt 


225 00 


2,250 00 



To get the tax find the full amount and take 
three-fourths of it. 

Let us suppose that instead of three-fourths 
being required, a half more is required. Then 
beginning with $100,000 plus and using $100,000 
as the unit of increase and employing the rate per 
cent of slower increase, we have as follows : 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 



235 



Values Taxed. 


Rates on the Dollar. 


Taxes. 


First 


^100,000 


I 1-2 times 3 i-io 


cents. 


$4,650 00 


Second 


.100,000 


I 1-2 times 3 2-10 


(r 


4,800 00 


Third 


100,000 


I 1-2 times 3 3-10 


tC 


4,950 00 


Fourth 


100,000 


I 1-2 times 3 4-10 


t( 


5,100 00 


Fifth 


100,000 


I 1-2 times 3 5-10 


It 


5,250 00 


Sixth 


100,000 


1 1-2 times 3 6-10 


{( 


5,400 00 


Seventh 


100,000 


I 1-2 times 3 7-10 


u 


5,550 00 


Eighth 


100,000 


I 1-.2 times 3 8-10 


u 


5,700 00 


Ninth 


100,000 


I 1-2 times 3 9-10 


tt 


5,850 00 


Tenth 


100,000 


I 1-2 times 4 


« 


6,000 00 



Rapid rate to put an end to the big pools. 



Values 


Rates on the 


Taxes on each 


Total even 


Taxed. 


Dollar. 


$1 


,000,000. 


Taxes. 


5 1,000,000 


4 i-io cents. 




$41,000 


$ 41,000 


2,000,000 


4 2-10 


(i 




42,000 


84,000 


3,000,000 


43-10 


{£ 




43,000 


129,000 


4,000,000 


44-10 


(t 




44,000 


156,000 


5,000,000 


45-10 


(( 




45,000 


225,000 


6,000.000 


4 6-10 


«C 




46,000 


276,000 


7,000,000 


47-10 


{( 




47,000 


329,000 


8,000,000 


48-10 


t( 




48,000 


384,000 


9,000,000 


4 9-10 


t< 




49,000 


441,000 


10,000,000 


4 5 


(( 




50,000 


500,000 



This looks like a heav}^ rate of taxation, but 
how many of the ordinary farmers and mer- 
chants are there who have to pay even a higher 
rate than this? Go and examine your tax 
receipts. 

Taxation upon this plan I have denominated 
*' fair,'* partly because I had need to make use 
of some distinguishing term of reference, and 



236 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 



partly because I believe the object sought by it 
justifies the use of the term. 

Fair taxation I believe to be a justifiable re- 
sort of man for the profit of himself. My reason 
is that it would affect the well-being and hap- 
piness of man How ? By opening the way to 
industrial freedom, whence would proceed free 
competition with all its advantages. Name 
these advantages. They are in the main, 
general equality of rate in the profitableness of 
industries, general equality of supply with de- 
mand, general equality of reward with earnings^ 
constant activity of energy and capital and rapid 
and uniform progress of the human race. The 
special process by which these ends would be 
reached has been treated upon in the body of 
this work. But I shall try to indicate a little 
'further what would be some of the intermediate 
steps toward that final and proper adjustment 
of affairs which it is the province of fair taxation 
to accomplish. 

It will not be denied that the order of the day 
and age is the centralization of capital into the 
form of monopolies, the provocative being, as I 
claim, false taxation. What we want, I claim 
again, is the discouragment of such centralization? 
and the resolving back to a state of normalcy, that 
capital which now exists in the form of mono- 
polies. Fair taxation would place the forces of 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 237 

normalization in the ascendency — stop further 
combination of industries into the form of mono- 
polies, and reduce existing concerns of the kind 
to a state of normalcy, afterward keeping them 
there. 

What I consider to be the normalcy of in- 
dustries is the existence of them as adequately 
capitalized concerns, operating independently of 
each other, and situated to best advantage as re- 
gards both sources of supply and sources of de- 
mand.* 

The normalization of existing monopolies could 
be expected to be active and vigorous immedia- 
tely succeeding the enactment of a fair tax law. 
The motives which stimulated to it would be 
various, that of necessity being uppermost, and I 
cannot explain them in smaller compass than to 
embrace them in language, issuing direct from 
the mouths of the men who would be the inter- 
ested actors in the scene. We may suppose 
that the stockholders of the Three-profit industry 
have met again in council, but this time to con- 
sult somewhat out of the common fashion. In 



* Lumber will always be manufactured where the timber grows, but 
normalcy would be the manufacture of lumber by many different com- 
panies, with mills of adequate size, and doing business independently of 
each other, as opposed to the manufacture of it by a few big companies, 
with great clumsy mills, and all joined in a grand pool for the keeping up 
of prices. Such industries as could be would be distributed evenly over 
the country and in the communities it was their purpose to supply. 



238 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

council met, Goldhunter in the chair, Longhead 
upon the floor, let us take note of what might be 
expected to compose a part, in essence, of their 
deliberations. 

Mr. Longhead: "It is not worth while for us 
to think of contending against the inevitable. We 
no longer stand upon vantage ground. Indeed 
we are at absolute disadvantage. Our industry 
at best is cumbersome and costly to manage, our 
trusted superintendents, upon whom so much 
depends, are only half watchful of our interests, 
and our markets and sources of supply are in the 
main distant, situated as we are here upon a 
single point of the continent. These are not con- 
tingencies calculated to enable us to cope with 
others more favorably situated in these and other 
respects, to say nothing of the drawbacks imposed 
by excessive taxation. We must make haste to 
get ourselves as favorably fixed as are our com- 
petitors. At least we must agree to terminate 
our combination, and to let each stockholder take 
such action in the future as suits him best." 

Mr. Blockhead (interrupting): "Why, Mr. 
Longhead, I am surprised. Can we not raise 
prices to meet this unrighteous tax.^" 

Mr. L. : "M}^ dear sir, it pains me to tell you 
that we cannot raise prices at all. With new 
factories springing up everywhere we must sell 
for what others do, or not sell at all." 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 239 

Mr. B. '* But can't we flood the audacious as- 
pirers out, as we have always managed to do?" 

Mr. L. ''That was practicable when our ad- 
vantages gave us profits that afforded us a large 
squandering fund, but the plan is not practica- 
ble now. Besides, the railroads are also prepar- 
ing to divide up and we would have to bargain 
and chaffer with a dozen companies ever}^ time 
we wanted to get discriminating rates. We 
could not succeed.'* 

Mr. Soberman. *'I cannot say that I am ex- 
ceedingly loth to withdraw my interests in this 
concern. I would like to start my son in the 
same business upon a smaller scale in another 
part of the country. He will then have the ad- 
vantages of interested personal supervision — 
the supervision of himself — and nearness to 
market. He will have also something that is 
subject to better control, and therefore more 
profitable to hi7n. I know we have argued that 
we have cheapened processes by bringing our 
means together in extensive bulk, but we have 
had a motive in arguing so. We are aware 
that the cheapening of processes is due more to 
the inventions and contrivances of our practical 
mechanics, than to anything else under the sun. 
I believe I can start my son in the west with a 
co7npleie factory, small enough not to be cum- 
bersome, and large enough to contain every ap- 



240 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

pliance and device needed for his business, and, 
with the wool and hides, and buyers of his 
wares all at his door, be putting him in a situa- 
tion to sell at figures to surprise us and yet enrich 
himself much faster than he could here do under 
the best of conditions in our favor. I do, indeed. 
Aside, I am afraid if he is not put into the 
business and drilled upon details, he will not 
have skill enough to protect his interests after 
I am gone. He could not now marshal a wisdom 
with the aflfairs of our business, that would be of 
efficient worth as a shield against the shrewdness 
of any unprincipled practical manager, if any 
such there be, in this concern; and the danger is 
not altogether an unprospective one of some of 
them taking his place in the ownership of my 
possessions." 

Mr. Float: " Those suggestions strike me with 
the aspect of a ray of hope. I see the necessity 
of us disorganizing ourselves and it pleases me 
to see that some good and not all bad is to come 
of it. Besides, I am led to have a little faith in 
this contrary doctrine, and if it could be that the 
cause of our present inconvenience, could be also 
the cause of constant activity in the future and 
cause of relief from strikes and from turmoil with 
employes, what an improvement would it be. 
There is loss and embarrassnient attached to 
tearing up and separating. But how much do 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 24 1 

we lose now from differences with our men, and 
from over-production of wares and from idleness 
ot our capital. I am not much dissatisfied with 
the necessity to terminate our union." 

Chairman Goldhunter: ''It is a matter we 
cannot avoid. Something must be done to save 
us. Therefore let us meet again and again until 
we have settled upon the best way out of our 
undesirable situation, and may it come to pass, as 
Mr. Float is not loth wholly to despair of, that 
what we are compelled to do, may bring us good 
instead of bad." 

This, to my mind, prefigures what would be 
the order of the day, until a state of normalcy or 
naturalness had been reached, after the enactment 
of fair tax law. Industries would seek, first, to 
reduce themselves to the smallest size compatible 
with sufficiency of capital, and they would seek, 
secondly, to locate themselves with the greatest 
advantage as respects both buyers and sources of 
supply. Expressed otherwise, the tendency would 
be to a general planting of industries everywhere 
upon the basis of smallest size that afforded com- 
pleteness, in obedience to the enforcements of free 
competition. To illustrate. We may say that, 
a shoe factory cannot be properly stocked and 
operated with a smaller capital than a sum of 
$50,000, but that $50,000 will suffice to provide 
such a factory and fill it up with all the most im- 



242 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

proved machinery, tools and the devices for the 
making of shoes, and for the keeping in constant 
supply the proper amount of leather and other 
material for the successful pursuit of the business 
If this be so, then $50,000, without much va 
riation from that sum, will constitute the val 
nation of the various shoe factories of the country 
The fear of high taxes would keep shoe factory 
men from enlarging their factories above that 
valuation, while the disadvantage of lack of ma- 
chinery and other capital would prevent them 
trying to do upon less valuation* One motive 
would be to avoid high tax, the other would be 
to avoid a saving that would bring greater loss 
in lack of efficiency. 

As it would be with the shoe industries so it 
would be with all other industries. Those which 
could be formed into completeness upon a thousand 
dollar valuation would generally be found to be 
conducted upon a thousand dollar valuation. 
Those that required hundreds of thousands of 
dollars to complete and run to best advantage 
would be conducted upon the high priced basis. 
But the basis of completeness would not be over- 
reached, nor would proximity to communities 
sought to be supplied be made objects of dis- 
regard. 

The motives which induced to the lessening of 
industries to the size of sufficiency would be two: 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 243 

first, to profit from low taxation ; secondly, to 
profit from the commodiousness of handlino^ small 
capital. The motive to locate nearest to patrons 
and market would be to profit from saving in 
transport costs. We thus see that when we 
start the desire to profit from low taxation we 
arouse the desire to profit from natural advan- 
tages. The arousing of the desire to profit from 
natural advantages is due to the fact that 
when we have, by fair taxation, shorn persons 
of the privilege to profit by artificial advantage, 
then they must resort to every natural advantage 
that they can think of, or see themselves outdone, 
and left to suffer, by the more enterprising. They 
must come to such terms as will accommodate the 
public, since they can no longer force the public 
to come to such terms as will accommodate them. 
I have elsewhere explained the advantages 
that sufficiency of capital has above superabun- 
dance and need not occupy more time upon the 
subject here. Aside, the smaller the capital, the 
greater the profit, so the capital is up to the limit 
of enough, is a maxim that no one will deny. I 
can therefore proceed to predict in another form 
a general result of the influences brought to the 
top by fair taxation. This general result is the 
exhibition of local centers of industry everywhere, 
with sameness of valuation in each distinct in- 
dustry belonging to the same class. Thus, fac- 



244 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

tories that it cost $50,000 to complete would be 
found as $50,000 factories. Thousand dollar 
businesses would be run upon one thousand dollar 
bases, and so with all others. And the distri- 
bution as to places of business would follow the 
same law of necessity. Manufactures of woolen 
goods could not collect themselves upon a single 
spot of the continent and compel people to hire 
their wools hauled to them and their woolens 
hauled back. They would have to come to the 
people or get no trade. They would have to 
respect the demands of east and west, north and 
south. They, and their brother dictatorialists in 
other affairs, would have to assume a radical 
change of policy in their mone3^-making endeavors. 

Who would pay the taxes? 

Let us now see how the tax burdens would be 
distributed after industries had been reduced to 
the state I have described, or the state of nor- 
malcy. 

The shoe factories of the nation being of uni- 
form size, they each would pay the same rate 
per cent, of tax upon the dollar. The lumber 
manufacturers being uniform in wealth, they 
each would pay the same rate of tax. That is, 
in each class of industries, the branches or divi- 
sions thereof being of uniform worth, the 
branches or divisions would each pa}' the same 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 245 

rate per cent, of tax upon the dollar. There, 
therefore, would be no partiality as between the 
different members or firms engaged in the same 
kind of business. 

Now, as to the classes of industries which 
must be possessed of large capital, like the rail- 
roads and some classes of iron industries. They 
would have nothing to fear from cheaply taxed 
competitors in their lines of business, since there 
would be no cheap competitiors. 

They, therefore, could effect a recovery in 
their dealings with the public in such a manner 
as to equalize the tax burden everywhere. And 
that is what it ends in. An apparently partial 
system of taxation effects thorough tax equali- 
zation. In other words, the large dealers are 
not prevented from charging the balance of the 
public to make up for the extra tax they pay, 
and thus to secure the same rate of profit all 
other businesses receive. 

What now becomes of the objection to taxing 
capital at increased rates according to increased 
worths.^ What other plan will affect equaliza- 
tion of taxation everywhere? How are we go- 
ing to equalize taxation over all, a thing that 
has never been done, except by the method here 
proposed.^ The circumstance that saves the large 
industries is the natural monopoly they possess 



246 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

up to the amount of least capital that can en- 
counter with them in similar trade. 

How different it is with the middle class to- 
day. They pay the largest rate per cent, upon 
the dollar of any class of tax-payers. Indeed, 
fair taxation reversed and exaggerated is some- 
thing like what they are made the abutments of. 
The poor are favored w^th legal exemption, as 
a rule, while the rich favor themselves with tax 
evasions of their own making, that are too noto- 
rious to need description. It results, therefore, 
that the middle class pay the heavy taxes; but 
as they can have no say whatever as to the 
prices they must get, the exactors settling every- 
thing for them, they have no chance whatever 
for indemnification of themselves. This is down- 
right imposition, while there is not the least sav- 
oring of unfairness in taxing those most highly 
who have a chance for recovering back. 

THE METHOD OF LEVY. 

Let us understand how this tax is to be ap- 
plied. The values to be taxed must not be based 
upon individual or corporate wealth without 
regard of what that wealth consists of. The 
worth to be taxed is the worth of the one indus- 
try, or several of the same class, which belong 
to a single combination or management. John 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 247 

Thompson, for instance, may be a stockholder 
in the coal Industry. But we do not care any- 
thing about what he is worth or what else he 
owns. We want to get the worth of the coal 
property or properties his corporation controls, 
including all coal lands, worked or unworked, 
all buildings, tracks, mules, stores, and every- 
thing connected with the coal industry under 
that company's control. And if the corpora- 
tion operate, own or control, or have pooled 
with several different mines in several different 
places, and have coal yards in several different 
cities and towns, we want to place the assess- 
' ment at what the percentage will make it upon 
the aggregate value of these. If they arrange 
with transportation companies for discrimina- 
tion against others, add to the assessment value 
the capital of the transportation company also. 
The assessment wants to be put upon a valua- 
tion that is co-equal with the combination. This 
will encourage the stockholders to divide up 
and compete with one another, and to keep 
clear of combinations with transportation com- 
panies. Of course, state and national assistance 
will be needed to get the values of combined 
properties in some Instances, especially with 
railroads, but when the local assessor has the 
valuation furnished to him, he can make the as- 
sessment according to the rule upon all the pro- 



248 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

perty within his jurisdiction, and it can be col- 
lected in the same local manner. The valua- 
tions must be put at real worths, the same to be 
arrived at by aid of bonds, stocks and so forth. 

If John Thompson has manipulated matters 
until he himself owns all of the coal mines and 
coal territory in his part of the country, and the 
taxation is hurting him much, he has a way out 
of the difficulty. He can sell a part of his coal 
property and invest in the lumber industry and 
the flour industry; which industries will be valued 
separately. He will thus be entering the field 
against other lumbermen and other flour manu- 
facturers, and making himself a competitor with 
them. He will take good care not to combine with 
them too extensively. It is very likely that he 
and some overloaded lumberman will make ex- 
changes for the mutual benefit of each other. 

Industries that cannot be conducted with small 
capital, as has just been explained, will not suffer 
from their correspondingly heavy taxation, be- 
cause they will not have any lightly taxed com- 
petitors to prevent them from charging enough 
to make up for the heavy tax. Railroads are an 
example. If in some natural way wealthy con- 
cerns can keep out competition and handsomely 
put it to us, we can receive some consolation by 
musing upon our authority to put the taxes to 
them. 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 2^g 

Railroads may talk about the advantages of 
through lines and the cost to the public of un- 
loading and reloading between connections, if the 
roads are divided up, but the people will be will- 
ing to forego those advantages and to foot the 
extra bills in consideration of other advantages 
received. Besides, the railroads will find a way 
to pass cars over one another's lines for the sake 
of pocketing what would otherwise be the cost 
of unloading and reloading. 

How would the change from combined indus- 
tries in single spots to that of uncombined indus- 
tries generally distributed affect the railroads? 

Through traffic in the goods of particular in- 
dustries would decrease, but the loss would be 
more than made up by increased local traffic in 
the same goods. The general prosperity of the 
people would make increased travel as;well as 
make such a demand for all classes of goods, 
that the through traffic on what mus/he through 
would increase immeasurably. The exactors, 
as a class, could make no better investment than 
to cheerfully give support to a cause which has 
for its object the development of the -rest of the 
country to a state to match their own over-done 
industries. 

How about means to meet heavy taxation? 
The exactors are not suffering so much from 
want of means as from want of good opportu- 



250 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

nity to invest means. Such a tax as is proposed 
would afford them an opportunity to invest a 
part of their means in the most profitable way 
that could be thought of, viewed from their own 
or anybody elses standpoint, at the present time. 
It would adjust all industries to a paying basis. 
When that was done, and prosperity became 
general, and public and private indebtednesses 
extinguished, as they rapidly would be, and the 
necessity for government control and restriction 
was reduced to the minimum, as it soon would 
be, taxes would be very nominal, and the law 
would stand rather as a menace against combi- 
nation than as a means of raising revenue. 

Does this tax possess the virtue we claim for 
it.^ The best practical example we have is our 
tariff tax. It has formed an eftective barrier be- 
tween us and foreign encroachers. Why will 
not this tax, which is upon the same principle, 
then do for us, as against home exactors, what 
the tariff does for us as against foreign exactors? 
The tax is simply a tarifi" interposed between the 
exactors and the masses without regard to ocean 
or boundary line, and there is not an argument 
that can be advanced in favor of protection 
against foreigners that cannot be applied with 
exact adaptitude and propriety in favor of the 
S3^stem of fair taxation here proposed. 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 25 1 



RATE OF TAX INCREASE. 

It may be asked, what is the rate of increase 
in tax proposed to be established under this sys- 
tem? The answer is, the lowest rate that will 
suffice to bring about and maintain normalcy. 
No greater rate of increase should there be. To 
increase the rate beyond what was necessary to 
create normalcy would be to give an advantage 
in tax that would allow imperfect and uncheap 
industries, because they were small, to drive out 
larger and perfect ones. Judgment and experi- 
ence must establish the exact rate. My opinion 
is, that a greater variance will be required to 
drive to normalcy than will be required to main- 
tain it after it has once been established, and I 
believe a very slight variance will suffice to 
maintain normalc}^ — -a perfect S3^stem against 
evasions being understood or premised. 

PERSONAL SATISFACTIONS. 

I would not tax any property used especially 
for the living, comfort and pleasure of man, as 
his house and contents, his pleasure horse and 
buggy, his cottage at the summer resort, his 
anything not designed to be used for increase of 
his wealth. 

My reasons are: 



252 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

1. The capitalists having it in their power to 
recover in their dealings with the public in such 
a manner as to equalize taxation, it makes no dif- 
ference to them if people that have no capital pay 
no tax at all. 

2. Rich, medium and poor capitalists posses- 
sing about the same ratio of capital to their 
household and pleasure property, it makes no dif- 
ference to them whether the tax is placed upon 
the total of their property or upon the capital 
alone. Each would have about the same amount 
of tax tg pay any way. 

Then if we relieve household and pleasure pro- 
perty from tax altogether, those having plenty 
of means will indulge in extra expenditure in this 
direction. This will make it better for those 
having small means, by increasing the demand 
upon their energies and capital. It will tend to 
check the speed of wealth increase among the 
wealthier, and to accelerate wealth increase 
among the less wealthy, thereby providing for 
improved social relationships. 

INCOMES. 

Incomes should not be taxed. It discourages 
industry. Tax the capital from which the income 
is procured, and the capital will be stimulated 
into activity in order to get the means to pay tax 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 253 

with. There is neither reason nor justice in mak- 
ing one pay a penalty for exceeding another in 
enterprise and production. Place the tax where 
it will punish negligence. Then we have to wait 
but a season until what income is to become cap- 
ital will settle itself there, when it will be subject 
to taxation. 

Upon this plan, the farmer pays tax upon the 
value of his land, stables, work horses, machinery, 
tools and seed, but nothing upon the crop raised. 
The merchant pays upon his building and the aver- 
age value of stock carried, but nothing upon the 
amount of business done. The manufacturer 
pays upon the value of plant and average raw 
stock kept on hand, but nothing upon finished 
products. It would tend to the making of most 
out of what was had. 

The tax upon capital alone does away with the 
objectionable feature of inquisitorialism and is 
the easiest in all respects to be laid and collected. 

MONEY. 

Money, in the promiscuous hands of the people, 
it would be safe to omit from tax. In the hands 
of lenders it should be considered as capital and 
taxed accordingly. 



254 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 



RIGHT OF TAX REGULATION. 

That it is a function of the taxing power to 
exercise itself in the regulation of industrial af- 
fairs none will deny. It is constantly being so 
used in the tariff, subsidies, excise and in other 
spheres. 

TARIFF. 

Could all countries be influenced to adopt a 
fair tax law, then no country adopting it 
would need to supplement it with a tariff law. 
The chance to encroach would be abolished 
everywhere. Until the law was established by 
all nations, however, those adopting it would have 
to adopt one for those who neglected to do so, 
by going up to the boundaries of their own nation 
and interposing a tariff. Should we adopt a fair 
tax law and remove our tariff, foreign exactors 
could soon flood us with their cheap surpluses, 
ruin our industries, get us in shape to suit them- 
selves and then exact off us at will. The fact of 
an ocean or boimdary line being between us and 
the exactois of other nations does not relieve us 
from the necessity to provide against them, as we 
must do, if we would have justice, against our 
own exactors. Nor can he who argues for pro- 
tection against foreign exactors consistently argue 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 255 

against protection against home exactors. The 
objects of both agree. 

It is not my purpose to discuss here what rate 
of tariff duties should be in general interposed to 
give us protection against the designs of foreign 
exactors, because when the time comes that we 
have a fair tax law we will be better prepared to 
settle this other question. In the fixing of a 
tariff we want to arrive at a mean between ex- 
tremes which will not permit foreign exactors, 
on the one side, to easily swamp our industries 
and get the field to themselves, and which will 
not keep us, on the other side, producing many 
commodities that could be gotten cheaper by 
exchange. That mean or the various means, 
will not be harder, but easier to establish under 
the light of free competition than under present 
lights, while free competition, with our duties as 
they at present are, would be an immeasurable im- 
provement upon present affairs — improvement 
sufficient to make other nations soon follow our 
example, when we could do away with tariff 
altogether. 

An exclusive market as against outsiders, with 
free competition within for the adjustment of 
prices was the ideal sought after by the early 
champions of protection, and not the right to over- 
charge. Alexander Hamilton says, in speaking 
of the benefits of protection, "When a domestic 



256 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

manufacture has attained to perfection, and has 
engaged in the prosecution of it a competent 
number of persons, it invariably becomes cheaper. 
Being free from the heavy charges which attend 
the importation of foreign commodities, it can be 
afforded cheaper, and accordingly seldom or never 
fails to be sold cheaper, in process of time, than 
was the foreign article for which it was a sub- 
stitute. The internal competition which takes 
place soon does away everything like monopoly, 
and by degrees reduces the price of the article to 
the minimum of a reasonable profit on the capital 
employed. This accords with the reason of the 
thing and with experience.'* 

Hamilton foresaw competition^ instead of mo- 
nopoly and thought in providing against foreign 
monopolists, that was all that was necessary. It 
did not occur to him that it was as easy for mo- 
nopolists to grow up in America as it was for 
them to grow anywhere else. 

Horace Greely says: *^But with what reason, 
with what justice, does any one say that an im- 
port or tax on imported iron or nails, cloth or 
cutlery, creates a monopol}^?" He did not expect, 
did not look for monopol}^ tosucceedcompetition. 
He supposed that there were persons abroad who 
would, if not held back, prevent free competition 
between us and them, but it did not occur to him 
that persons would rise up within our own boun- 

V 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 257 

daries and take the place of those abroad. But 
human nature is the same everywhere, and if the 
fellow across the line must have restraint, the 
fellow similarly situated on this side of the line 
must also have restraint. 

A protective tariff law is an enactment half 
way along in the right direction. It needs to be 
supplemented with a fair tax law to form a per- 
fect piece of work. Unsupplemented with a fair 
tax law, it isof unavail forgood whatever. When 
w-e create a protective tariff, and rest at that 
alone, we as much as say to others: ^'Begin your 
vocations within our domain, and we will pro- 
tect you against encroachments from abroad; 
we will also insure you the right to levy at will 
from our people at home." Or, it amounts to 
declaring to exactors abroad: "You dare not 
plunder our people from where you stand; come 
across .the line with your institutions, and we will 
issue you a free plunder permit." To carry out 
the complete objects of tariff we must arrange 
so that persons cannot do within our boundaries, 
what we will not allow them to do while they 
remain outside. We want no monopolizatioa 
and one-sided dictation whatever; and while a. 
tariff must be had to shield us against the injiu- 
ences of exacting combinations abroad, the fair 
tax law must be had to shield us from the exist- 
ence oi QX2ic:tmz combinations at home. 



258 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 



LABOR AND CAPITAL. 

Would this plan of dealing with society end 
the strife between labor and capital? Yes, b}^ 
creating the common enrichment of all, when 
the interests of labor and capital would be merged 
in the same individuals and leave no room for 
cause of quarrel. 

TAX ON LIQUORS. 

As this is a question which would come up in 
the general discussion upon tax reform, I append 
a few remarks upon the subject. My opinion is, 
that the government should not stimulate the 
manufacture and sale of liquors by taxing the 
occupations, or give tone and sanction to the 
business by accepting profit from them. My 
plan would be to license, say the retail druggists, 
free of charge, to handle and sell. Then I would 
require them to get their supplies through sala- 
ried officials, whose duties it were to keep a 
record of the supplies, and where they went; 
and to make out, for public display in the drug 
stores, schedules of the cost of the liquors per 
quart, pint, or however they would be sold. The 
schedules would be for the guidance of the pub- 
lic and the cost prices are the prices at which I 
would require the liquors to be sold. The druo^- 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 259 

gists would not engage in liquor selling then, ex- 
cept as they expected to profit from the extra 
drug custom attracted. This would be putting 
the thing upon the basis of a profitless conces- 
sion to depraved appetite, and be laying the 
foundation for the eventual stamping-out — other 
measures brought in aid — of an existing evil. 
Glass tanks for containing the liquors, and meas- 
ures of public display in general, would be guards 
"against adulterations, deception and so forth. 

WHO MUST LEAD* 

The question may now be asked, who must 
lead us out of the evils of exaction. There is no 
doubt, but that exaction is an evil to all, both ex- 
actors and the people. But it is not at all pro- 
bable that the exactors can be brought to accept 
such a conclusion in advance of contrary expe- 
rience. The slaveholder contends and battles 
for the institution of slavery until experience has 
taught him the advantages of treating with all 
as freemen, and the exactor must be expected to 
contend for the institution of exaction until he is 
driven to see the worth of a better system. To 
look for a difFerent thing, would be to look for 
what was at variance with past experience. 
Masters have always sought to keep the ad- 
vantage, have alwa3'S been blind to every benefit 



26o UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

except such as the mastery gave, since the biases 
and prejudices, and satisfactions born of exaction 
and of the ideas that they dwell upon the sweet 
side of affairs, prohibit masters from doing or 
seeing otherwise. Such being the case, then, what 
is the plain duty of the masses in the matter, if 
they would rid themselves of the evils of exaction? 
To take the lead and act for themselves. To 
look to self help for the way out of their ill-con- 
ditionedness, since that is the only help of worth, 
the only help they deserve and the only help they 
will ever get. Let them determine upon what 
they want and issue their orders from among 
themselves. When they know they have a 
champion at the law-making quarters, let them 
send others from amongst themselves to back 
and sustain him. Let them refrain from picking 
their men on account of glibness of tongue, social 
influence, good dress or stylish manners. Men 
can be s^ot who will be less apt to sell out than 
him who thinks it is his first duty to keep up with 
best society, his second duty to find the money to 
meet the expense, and his third and last duty to 
look after his re-election. I would say to the 
masses, pick your man for honor, will and pro- 
bity. Tell him, you are the sovereign^ he is the 
agent. Employ him, and instruct him as to his 
duties. You will not be likely then to fail in 
accomplishing what you want. 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 26 1 

Now I think the choice lies in one of these two 
— ^for the exactor to do that which is an injury to 
him and the race, or for us to do that which is a 
benefit to him and the race. Which shall it be? 



ADDENDA. 



SUBSIDIES. 



According to the principle we have been advo. 
eating, subsidies are bad from the standpoint both 
of receivers and givers. An industry that must 
be coaxed into existence anywhere with a bounty 
is one that otherwise refuses to appear, because, 
in the judgment of projectors patronage will not 
justify the creation of it. Then, if before a bounty 
is offered there is no show for a certain business 
to pay in a certain community, there is still less 
chance of its paying after the bounty givers 
have disabled themselves to the extent of what 
the retention of the bounty would have helped 
them to make of themselves good patrons. In- 
vestors who are asked to take stock in an enter- 
prise that is the recipient of all sorts of aid, re- 
presenting the self-imposed burdens of the com- 
munity in which the enterprise is to be, should 
inquire if the aid the enterprise was getting, was 
what influenced parties to locate their enterprise 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 263 

in such and such a place. If answered in the af- 
firmative, then they should refuse to invest in 
the enterprise at all, since the evidence is prima 
facie that the investment will not be a paying- 
one. If told that the community will grow up to 
the enterprise, then they should remember that 
the community has imposed upon itself a burden 
to bring in an elephant, and will have to contribute 
in the future to keep the elephant alive and that 
the two burdens are more likely to keep the com- 
munity at standstill or decline than to allow of 
its making any advance. There can be no poorer 
incentive for the introduction of an industry any- 
where, than the offer of bonded aid. It is simply 
an attempt of a people to entice an industry into 
an unwarranted quarter by the device of ren- 
dering themselves more unfit than they already 
are to receive the industry and do justice to it in 
the way of future support. 

People who are asked to vote bounties in these 
times of bounty giving, in aid of enterprises, 
should remember that "bonds of aid," do not add 
a cent to present means of investment. They are 
a mere something to get mone}^ out of the people 
in the future with. They add nothing to the 
money which is waiting for a chance of invest- 
ment. The money which is going into a new rail- 
road, that there is no present need for, is money 
that is already accumulated; money that is seek 



264 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

ing outlet in an unneeded railroad, because it sees 
no better chance of investment elsewhere; money 
that has become piled up in the hands of exactors 
through extortions upon the people; money that 
would not be idle, if people refused everywhere to 
give bonds; money that is as anxious as can be 
for investment, and that would, in the event of no 
bonds being offered anywhere, simply come out 
and invest itself where it thought the future offered 
the best reward. 

People who are asked to vote bounties should 
content themselves with answering that they pre- 
ferred to keep their wealth for the enrichment of 
themselves, when they either could establish their 
own industries or afford such patronage as would 
make outside capital glad to settle in their midsts. 
By keeping themselves out of debt they would 
sooner bring themselves up to a state when new 
industries were really needed and had a sub- 
stantial foundation to build upon. They could not 
then keep out new industries if they tried. New 
industries would come in in spite of things and 
prosper, while subsidized industries, and the com- 
munities they burdened, were yet languishing in 
successlessness and disappointment. 

Suppose that A and B be rival towns. A firm 
of pork packers, we will say, do not think that 
the sales of pork in these two towns and territory 
round about would justify their going into the 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 265 

packing business in either town. They will 
erect a packing house, however, in the one of 
these two towns which will donate them $20,000. 
Which would it be best for A to do, to raise the 
donation herself or to encourage B to raise it? 
Let us follow and see. If A issues $20,000 in 
bonds and presents them to the firm she will in 
due time have the debt and the packing house. 
She will also have an influx of 100 laborers who 
will patronize the stores and an influx of a pro- 
portional number of new stores to share the in- 
crease of patronage. She will further have a 
packing house that is not a paying institution, 
since the issue of bonds by the town of A did 
not tend to increase the demand for pork in A 
and B, and territory contiguous. Which place is 
the best off? A who bribed the packing house to 
settle within her Hmits or B who did not.^ If you 
agree with me that B is the best ofl' then you 
will agree with me that when an industry cannot 
see its way clear to make itself pay in a ceriain 
quarter without a bribe then it had better not be 
encouraged to come. You will also agree with 
me that when a town thinks of bribing an in- 
dustr}' to settle within her limits, then neigh- 
boring towns will do well to stand ofl' and let her 
bribe. They will get the benefit of having the 
industry within reach of them without becoming 
the immediate burden bearers of it. 



266 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION 

This illustration applies in a case where the 
demand for the articles proposed to be manu- 
factured is not sufficiently strong to insure pros- 
perity to the industry proposed to be established. 
Then if we apply it to a case where a monopolied 
institution awa}' off somewhere, has it in its power 
to flood the markets contiguous to the new in- 
dustry, or to get railroad discrimination against 
it, for the purpose of ruining the new firm, we will 
find that A is infinitely worse off than B, since 
she will soon have in return for her bribe, noth- 
ing but a bonded debt, a big rat harbor and an 
overgrowth of population and business houses. 

Apply the case to a railroad, the purpose of 
the managers of which is to drain the country 
throuerh which it runs of everythino^ the inhabi- 
tants can produce except a meager living, and 
we have an example of the highest sort of fool- 
ishness in a people who have bonded their towns 
and townships for the sake, as they were made to 
believe, of getting the road. They have fixed 
themselves so as to be without any chance what- 
ever for future improvement. While to have 
refused bonds could not have resulted in material, 
if any, change of course in the road, yet it would 
have been better, could it have been done, to 
have kept the road out of the country altogether 
than to get it in with a deadening bribe. Pre- 
ferably to admitting into a country railways 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 267 

whose only object is to suck and drain, the people 
should arrange to live within themselves by pro- 
viding for homespuns and home-mades. By the 
adoption of such a course they could keep what 
increasethey (//(^ make,if the increase was not as 
rapid as that which would occur with the aid of 
a railroad conducted upon fair dealing principles. 
In the event of fair taxation communities would 
not want for the establishment of industries within 
their midsts. The contests would be between 
capitalists to gain entrance and none would think 
of estranging the good wills of communities by 
proposals for bonded aids. Aside, bond issues 
will not be popular when the rich, who dominate 
affairs, are principally taxed for the payment of 
them. 



CONFIRMATORY ARGUMENTS. 



It is not the aggregation of capital that is 
hurting the country; it is the monopoHzation of 
industries. 

Capital must combine to give us cheap pro- 
ductions — cheap food, cheap clothing, cheap 
everything. 

If you prohibited the combination of capital, 
then you would prohibit the construction of fac- 
tories, of railroads, of every device designed to 
assist the people in supplying themselves with 
their wants. 

You would say, " Live and do as your primi- 
tive ancestors did; " and you would make no use 
of the inventions and improvements that are the 
mark and evidence of our civilization and ad- 
vance. 

But you do not prohibit the combination of 
capital when you prohibit the monopolization of 
industries. When you prohibit the monopoliza- 
tion of industries, you do not say, " Capital shall 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 269 

not engage in industries as largely as it wants 
to; " you only say, " You shall not combine all 
industries of a given kind into a single concern."" 

The opponents of monopoly want to see flour- 
ishing railroads, factories, and industries of every 
kind; but they do not want to see all industries of 
certain classes monopolized by persons who want 
to make hogs of themselves. 

Between a pursuit conducted as a hundred in- 
dependent and adequate sized affairs, and the 
same conducted as one mammoth concern, there 
is a world of difference. 

Remember, you do not prohibit the growth of 
industries when you prohibit the monopolization 
of them. 

Industries must be, and if they cannot exist as 
single enormities, they will exist as adequate 
sized, but independently operating concerns. 



If individuals monopolize a few of the indis- 
pensable industries of the nation, then they have 
it in their power to absorb the profits of all other 
industries. If the railroads are combined under 
single managements, and the iron industries are 
so combined, and the petroleum industries are 
so combined, then the owners of those indus- 
tries can force all others to put up with a mere 
living and nothing more. They have it in their 



270 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

power to do so, and such is the character of hu- 
man nature that they nvill exercise that fo'wer. 
You cannot persuade them from so doing nor 
pre vert them from so doing. 

How can they exercise that power? 

By charging you what they please for their 
products and services and paying you what 
they please for your products and services. 

But what enables them to do this? 

They have the exclusive trade. There are 

none others to whom you can go when in need 

of the services and commodities, which they 

control. You must submit to the terms they 

propose. 

But can the people not get along without 

dealing with the monopolists and thus save 

themselves from imposition? 

Yes, if they can dispense with railroad 
service, and with iron and lumber and many 
other articles which are the product of monopo- 
lized industries. But they cannot dispense with 
them. Not any more than they can go naked 
or pay taxes and debts without money. 

Thus it is seen if individuals monopolize a 
few of the indispensable industries of the nation, 
they have it in their power to absorb the profits 
of all other businesses, and they nvill do so. 

They will render it impossible for the remain- 
der of the people to prosper. Let the remain- 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 271 

der of the people by harder work or improved 
processes produce increased sums, and the mo- 
nopolists will increase their demands to cover 
those increased sums. Let the remainder of the 
people resort to the practice of greater saving 
in order to get ahead, and the monopolists will 
compel them to continue the practice. The 
monopolists have it in their power to regulate 
the amounts the people may retain, and all they 
will permit the people to retain, produce they 
much or little, is sufficient to let them live and 
keep on producing. Under such unfortunate 
circumstances it is idle for the people to think 
of improving their condition. 



When a pursuit of any kind is carried on by 
several different parties, each acting indepen- 
dently of all the rest, then there can be no ex- 
tortion. Because if people are not bound to deal 
with one party alone they will not deal with him 
if he attempts to extort. They will exercise 
the privilege of going to some one else. If we 
had one hundred or more railroad systems in- 
stead of four as now, then we would have 
fair rates. 

Because the people could pass from one rail- 
road to another and bargain, as they do from 



272 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

Store to store. Competition is the secret of 
fair dealing. 

But when is there competition ? When one 
pursuit is not monopoHzed. When a pursuit is 
conducted as several different entireties instead 
of a single entirety. When you can say: "I 
would rather deal with this party than with that, 
because he gives me fairer terms," instead of 
saying, "I must submit to the extortion of this 
party for he controls the whole business." When 
there are several different establishments engaged 
in the same kind of business, and these establish- 
ments are carried on independently of each other, 
then is there competition. 

Competition can only be between businesses of 
the same kind. There can be no competition 
between a shoe dealer and a grocery man. They 
do not handle the same kinds of goods. A gro- 
cery man might he surrounded with a dozen dif- 
ferent dealers whose stocks consisted of other 
things than groceries, still he would have no com- 
petitor if he was the only party that sold gro- 
ceries. 

This, then, let us understand: competition can 
only be between different parties engaged in the 
same classes of pursuits. And let us understand 
that where competition is, there can be no ex-. 
tortion, but that where there is no competition, 
but monopol}^ there can be extortion and tvillh^ 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 273 

extortion, and that when monopolies embrace a 
share of the indispensable industries of the nation, 
then the extortion can be and vjill be so guaged 
as to absorb all the profits of all other industries. 

Against extortion, then, what answer? 

No monopoly, no extortion. Then, to rid our- 
selves of extortion we must rid ourselves of mo- 
nopolies. That is the only effectual course to 
pursue. Monopoly is the cause; extortion the 
effect. The effect cannot be removed while the 
cause remains. It is useless to think that it can. 
Monopoly and extortion are as inseparable as 
5unset and darkness. 

But should we accomplish the extinguishment 
of monopolies, would that not be accomplishing 
the extinguishment of the very industries em- 
braced in the monopolies? 

It is a popular fallacy that it would. Many 
people imagine that if those industries which are 
now monopolized, could not be maintained as 
monopolies, they could not be maintained at all. 
But such thought is as wild a fallacy as ever was 
harbored in man's mind. It is not essential to 
the existence, for instance, of railroads, that there 
should be but four systems. A hundred or more 
systems there could be just as well, and if there 
were a hundred or more systems competing with 
one another, instead of four systems as now, it 
would make all the difference between the pre- 



274 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

sent and what would be, that there is between 
decadence and progress, between adversity and 
prosperity. 

How will we rid ourselves of monopolies .^^ 
, Employ the taxing power. Provide for in- 
creased rate of taxation upon those who combine 
adequate sized industries into enormous wholes. 
The increase of tax will prevent union and mo- 
nopolization. Capitalists will carry on their bu- 
sinesses as separate institutions and as compe- 
titors. 

But is there a certainty of these results? Will 
not monopolization continue and prices be raised 
to meet the tax ? 

Prices can be no more raised to meet the de- 
mands of this tax than prices can be raised to 
meet the demands of a tariff tax. Against whom 
is the tariff directed ? Against individuals abroad 
who would monopolize the trade in this country 
of certain indispensables, and by a system of over- 
charging and underpaying rob our people of all 
but a bare living. A tariff forces these foreign- 
ers to do one ot two things : to cease trading with 
us or else to establish their capital upon a dif- 
ferent basis by planting their industries within 
our own lines. Some transplant while others, 
being established abroad, rest content with aban- 
doning our markets. 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 275 

Now the tax proposed would have the same 
effect upon those who would and do monopolize 
amongst us the trade in certain indispensables. 
Our monopolists would have but two alterna- 
tives left before them ; either to cease business ^ 
or to establish their capital upon a different ba- 
sis by dividing and pursuing their business as 
separate concerns. They would be placed at 
such a disadvantage as regards other capital 
that was ready to step in and avail itself of the 
saving of tax that they could not do otherwise. 
Of course monopolists would accept the latter al- 
ternative. Capital never did and never will de- 
liberately reduce itself to a state of profitless 
inanition. In other words, Vanderbilt & Co. 
would never think of pulling up their railroads 
and putting them into their pockets. When it 
came to the musi^ they would divide their large 
S3^stem of railroads into smaller systems and con- 
tinue to operate them as divided. 

But would not the division be mere pretense, 
a secret organization being maintained for the 
keeping up of prices.^ 

There could be no secret organization without 
its being discovered. No set of persons ever did 
form a combination for the self-regulation of 
prices, and continue it for any length of time 
without its being found out; and no set of per- 
sons ever can. The attitude of monopolists and 



276 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

competitors toward the public is, in so many re- 
spects, so widely different that people cannot long 
be in doubt as to what class a business belongs. 
And whenever a combination is found to exist, 
let the law be straightforwardly applied. It will 
have the effect of preventing monopolization. 

Granting to be facts what has been thus far 
asserted, there is still another objection. Will 
not the system of taxation proposed prove such 
a drawback to the aggregation of capital as to 
prevent entirely the appearance of industries that 
must be necessarily large .^ 

Not the slightest drawback in any way does 
the tax interpose. Those industries that must 
necessarily be large can have no small competi- 
tors, and, therefore, no similar industries with 
themselves possessed of an advantage over them 
in taxation. If an industry fnusi be capitalized 
to the extent of half a million dollars, how is 
there going to be a competitor with less capital? 
The effect of such a tax as this, properl}^ ar- 
ranged as to rate of increase, is to cause all in- 
dustries to assume a scale of sizes or worths 
which amounts to adequac}^ — fear of extra tax 
preventing over-size, disadvantage of lack of 
capital preventing under-size. 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 277 

Import duties rob nobody. The importer loses 
nothing for he gets his money back when he sells 
his goods. The people lose nothing, for the du- 
ties go into the pubHc treasury, and reHeve them 
of what would otherwise be so much direct tax- 
ation. It is paying money into the treasury to 
be placed to the peoples' credit, 

Whereat does the robbery of the tarifT lie 
then.? 

It lies with the home manufacturers. The}' 
can, by combining to cut off home competition, 
put up prices and rob the people indefinitely. 

So we see that it is not the tariff that robs. 
It is those who take advantage of the opportunity 
that the tariff gives them that do the robbing. 

What is the remedy then — to remove the 
tariff? 

No; if we removed the tariff the foreigner 
would rob us. 

What is the remedy then ? 
Prevent monopolization. There can be no rob- 
bery where there is no monopolizatioa 

Without a tariff monopolists abroad would 
force us to depend upon them for many of the 
indispensable articles of consumption, and by 
overcharging us for their commodities, and 
underpaying us for the commodities we gave in 



2 78 UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

exchange, cheat us out of all but a bare living. 
This any protectionist will tell you is true. 

With a tariff, monopolists at home force us to 
depend upon them for many of the indispensable 
articles of consumption, and by overcharging us 
for their commodities, and underpaying us for 
our commodities, cheat us out of all but a bare 
living. This any free trader will tell you is true. 

The protectionist and. free trader are both 
right. Without a tariff, the foreign monopolist 
robs; with a tariff, the home monopolist robs. 

Now let us remember that in both cases it is 
the monopolist who robs. 

Could the foreigner overcharge and underpay 
if he had not the monopoly in his business ? 
Could there be overcharging and underpaying if 
there was competition.^ Must there not be an 
agreement between all parties to work as one 
before extortion can begin .^ 

So with the home party. He must possess a 
monopoly before he can extort. 

Now here we are. Free trade and foreign ex- 
tortion ; tariff and home extortion. The tariffite 
is agreed to the one, the free tradeite is agreed to 
the other. Both are right. • 

Is it a choice between two evils, then.^ 

No. 

Then what is to be done.^ 

For one thing, let the tariff alone. That will 



UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 279 

bar out the foreign monopolist and save us from 
his imposition. 

Next employ the taxing power to prevent mo- 
nopolization at home. Then there will be no 
extortion at all and all the good results arising 
from the absence of exaction will follow. 



For a set of persons to inaugurate a boycott 
against an individual and rob him by injury of 
his business, that is conspiracy. 

For a set of persons to inaugurate a monopoly 
in the people's midsts and rob them all by a raise 
upon prices, that is conspiracy. 

The first act is punishable; the second is not.^ 

Why this distinction ? Why the one punish- 
able while the other is not? 

The. answer is, there is a law for punishment 
in the one case; there is no law for punishment in 
the other case. 

But why law for the one and not law for the 
other? 

The answer is to be sought in the influences 
that can be summoned b}^ parties possessed of an 
instrumentality for taxing all costs of contests^ 
both the people's and their own, up to the 
people. 



28o UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION. 

To provide ourselves with a remedy for the 
existing evils of society, we must institute a sys- 
tem of taxation which will prevent monopoliza- 
tion. 

Then we will have competition. 

And the same taxation which promotes com- 
petition will equalize taxation, through equaliz- 
ing the rate of profitableness in all branches of 
industry. 

Institute a system of taxation which will pre- 
vent monopolization and promote competition 
and you have solved the problem of the wel- 
fare of society. 

You have solved it, too, by the only mode in 
which it can be solved.'* 



ABSORBED. 

[Selection.] 

Corporate capital has grabbed and is grabbing; 

1. All the pine lands of the Northwest. 

2. All the grazing lands of the Southwest. 

3. All the mines of coal and iron of the East and Central 
States. 

4. All the petroleum of the Middle StpJtes. 

5. All the gold" and silver mines of the Rocky Mountain 
region. 

6. It handles all the wheat and pork and is fast absorbing all 
the land upon which those staples are raised. 

7: It controls all the means (railroads) for the distribution 
and exchange of these things — the primal necessaries of human 
life. 



THE PRO-MONOPOLIST. 

DURING THE SOUTHWEST STRIKE. 

It would appear that a considerable proportion of the pro- 
perty holders of the community at the present time, are elated 
over the fact that monopoly again has won, while they are 
chuckling with delight over the thought that a large portion of 
the strikers with their families will be forced to leave their 
dwellings and to go begging from a pitiless public for want of a 
better way to sustain life. 

While it is true that strikes are not to be justified and should 
be prevented by a removal of the causes which lead to them, 
is it not also true that the sentiment which moves people to 
crow over the victories of monopoly and to delight at the dis- 



11 SELECTED. 

comfiture of those who have attempted to stem their oppres- 
sions, forbodes anything but good to the common property 
holder or business man ? 

If the laborer must be forced to feed and clothe himself with 
the merest sufficiencies of life, to whom is the grocer going to 
sell his sugars and teas, the dry goods merchant his cloths and 
calicoes, the farmer his grain and beeves, that the laborer with 
better wages would freely buy. 

If the farmer must be subjected to a system of high freights, 
high interest and high taxes that go for the benefit of Eastern 
capitalists, who must buy the lumber, groceries, dry goods and 
hardware, that he otherwise would have bought ? 

If the merchant must pay a monopoly price for goods and an 
excessive rate of freight to get them here, where must he get 
his saving out of the few goods he can part with to an im- 
poverished public to pay rents, taxes, clerk hire and the keeping 
of his family ? 

The merchant probably figures that with low wages he can 
save ten dollars per month in clerk hire. He does not figure 
what are the immense losses from unsales occasioned by all 
other employes being poorly paid. 

The Western loan agent figures that the extortions of mono- 
polists bring him more mortgages. He does not figure that 
if the country was prosperous enough to dispense with mort- 
gages he could find another business at bigger profit. 

Every cent which the Eastern monopolist cheats the Western 
earner out of reflects to the disadvantage of the Western busi- 
ness man. There is so much less money lefthere than should be 
left here to buy with. In consequence, the merchant, the sew- 
ing machine agent, the mowing machine agent, the dentist, 
the doctor, the insurance agent, the house renter, all that class 
who rank commonly with the pro-monopolists, must experi- 
ence poor pay and dullness in their business. 

We cannot advocate the right of Eastern monopolists to 
charge us what they please for their materials and services, and 
to pay us what they please for our materials and services, with- 
out in the very act, advocating the direct destruction of our 
interests. The prosperity of any individual, no difference what 
he is engaged in, depends upon the prosperity of those around 



SELECTED. iii 

«. 
him. What goes away from us cannot stay with us ; and if all 
goes away from us but a bare living, then the retail merchants 
will have to engage in furnishing the people a bare living, and 
that is not a profitable business. 

We are not arguing against the right to force the laborer 
and farmer to live in poverty and rags. The right to do that 
seems to be so firmly fixed in the minds of many that it cannot 
be dislodged. What we do try to show is the consequence to 
the pro-monopolists, who must depend upon the impoverished 
for their patronage. There is one continuous and long lament 
issuing from the mouths of the pro-monopolist business men 
now on account of dullness of trade, and this will grow worse. 
For the sake of them the people in common should be allowed 
to retain more of their earnings. They could afford to give 
relief to the pro-monopolists, then, by spending more money 
with them. 

At the present time the property holders are no better situ- 
ated than the laborers. The laborer must have his living, 
even if the property holder is taxed to pay for it. 

The property holder, on the contrary, may or may not be 
making a living, but he can expect no help from the Eastern 
monopolist or any one else while he holds on to any property. 
If he is shaky, good sales might save him ; but if he believes 
in grinding down the horny-handed sons of toil to a bare liv- 
ing, he does not believe in that which will bring him good 
sales. He therefore deserves to go under. Any man who 
believes in the distress of those around him, that some far-off 
person who doesn't care a sniff for him may make a Croesus 
of himself, believes in that which will bring unto him certain 
ruin, and I suppose when the ruin comes upon him he de- 
serves it. If the ruin of himself is what the common business 
man wants, then let him yell, " Hurrah for Monopoly.*' 



i 



